


Starlight, bent in its tracks

by starknight



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Angst, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren Doesn't Die, C-3PO Didn't Lose His Memory, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant - His Dark Materials, Daemons, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Alternating, Poe Dameron Wasn't A Spice Runner, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Prophecy, Stormpilot and Reylo are both Major Ships, The Tatooine Scene Doesn't Exist, Travelling to Different Worlds, Witches, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknight/pseuds/starknight
Summary: Two will come, though they be as one,One chooses life, and one must die,The survivor will see how Light falls, when ‘tis done,And will restore the worlds to order.Ben stares at the last word of the prophecy, panic rising in his chest.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 17
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _IMPORTANT: You do not need to know anything about His Dark Materials to understand this fic._  
>   
>   
>   
>  This is a His Dark Materials crossover, but is still primarily set in the Star Wars universe, and only includes Star Wars characters. It is theoretically canon-compliant with both universes, but in the interests of spending more time writing and less time on wiki pages, I haven’t over-researched every little detail. If there’s anything that’s obviously wrong, feel free to let me know in the comments.
> 
> Thank you very much to my beta, Morrigan’s Muse, to [waffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM) for the lovely moodboard, and to the whole of The Writer’s Den and House Dadam - you guys are so lovely, enthusiastic, supportive and inspiring. 
> 
> And finally, to you, my readers! Thank you for giving this a chance, and please do leave kudos and comments if you enjoy it, they make my day. ♥♥♥  
> 

Rey kisses Ben fiercely, twists her fingers into his hair, and he is the happiest he’s ever been. Forget the cold, the damp, the Sith, the dark side, his entire miserable existence - if it was all for this, then it will have been worth it.

He wonders if Rey feels it too, that sense of coming home, of finding themselves in each other. It’s overwhelming, like the universe has suddenly snapped itself into place, everything coming right all at once. Kylo Ren once got that feeling from the dark side. Now Ben has it with the light.

Rey pulls away for breath, and grins at him. Ben grins back. He can feel the victory of the Resistance above them, great surges of joy in the Force washing over him thick and fast. Rey breathes in time with it, her eyes sparkling with red and green blaster light.

Ben is, for that shining moment, entirely and perfectly happy.

Then he feels a great and terrible force pushing from every direction around him, as if he were suddenly miles and miles underwater. He is powerless as he falls backwards, as reality warps and shifts around him. The only thing he can do is mouth Rey’s name as the world around him _rips_ and he emerges in a new one.

Rey doesn’t cry when Ben disappears. She doesn’t cry on her walk back to the ship, alone. She doesn’t cry when she sees his TIE fighter next to hers. She bites her lip, sets her jaw, and soldiers on, because she has to be strong. She has to be.

She makes it into hyperspace before the tears start.

An X-wing isn’t the worst place she’s cried, she thinks, scrubbing at her face angrily. It’s pointless. The tears she wipes away are only replaced with more. No, an X-wing isn’t the worst place to cry (Star Destroyers are worse), but it would be much improved with some tissues. Rey wipes her snotty nose on her sleeve, sniffs noisily, and leans her head back to look at the stars above.

Even with perfectly good stars in front of the viewscreen, the instinct to look up and philosophize is much stronger than the one to look straight ahead.

 _Ben is not dead._ It’s the only thought that is keeping her anchored right now. She has no idea where he’s gone, only that if he were dead, she would feel so much worse than the trainwreck she already is. It would feel like all the stars had been ripped from their places, like -

She stops herself there. She needs to be strong, and imagining what it would feel like if Ben were dead is not going to help. _Ben is not dead._ Their bond is still there, a little weakened, a little bruised, but still very much there. She can’t feel him as strongly as she usually can, which means, well, she’s been hurt, Ben’s been hurt - how bad were his injuries? Is he bleeding out somewhere, alone, unknown -

_Ben is not dead._

_No, he’s just temporarily misplaced,_ she thinks bitterly. She tries to reach out through their bond. She’s never been very good at that, or at least she’d never wanted to be good at that before. The radio silence now is unnerving. Rey sniffs again, and looks at the cold stars above. They’ve stopped talking now that Palpatine is dead.

 _Ben is not dead,_ she tells them. _Ben is not dead._

Once help arrives, the fight is over in a matter of minutes. Star Destroyer after Star Destroyer explodes, making the night look like a fiery christmas tree. Rose does her best not to think about the inside of those ships, because that was supposed to be them. The Resistance would have been going up in flames just like them without Lando’s help.

Rose pushes those thoughts out of her head, and focuses on her people instead. She passes out medpacks, she thanks the late arrivals over and over on the comms, she makes sure their ships are running as efficiently as possible on their way back to base.

Once they’re there, of course, it quickly turns from the end of their lives to the party of their lives. Rose has never been able to find out where Klaud gets his alcohol from, and probably doesn’t want to. The important thing now is that the Trodatome has it in plentiful amounts.

Rose takes a glass, but only sips. She’s waiting for -

“Rose!” Finn yells, tearing through the crowd towards her. She opens her arms and he lifts her up into the air.

“Put me down!” she gasps, but she’s smiling.

Finn obliges, but doesn’t let go of her.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” he says, his eyes going quiet and intense. “I thought it might be our only chance to… you know.”

Rose rolls her eyes. It’s getting easier to shrug off the all-consuming despair. “I’m glad the fight is over, if only so you’ll stop trying to die in heroic ways.”

Finn snorts, and opens his mouth to reply, but his eyes are fixed on a point over her head.

“What is it?” Rose asks, but he’s already pushed past her. She turns to see a ratty X-wing landing, complete with a muddy Jedi. Her heart does something weird, where it lifts and falls at the same time, ending up as a saggy mess. She doesn’t dislike Rey at all, entirely the opposite. Rey is probably the coolest person Rose has ever had the honour of existing near. Apart from maybe General Organa. No, she desperately wants to meet Rey. She just wishes Finn would take the time to realize that.

To be fair, there hasn’t been much time.

But _also_ , Poe and Rey only met two weeks ago, courtesy of Finn, and now look at them. Participating in an emotional three-way group hug.

Rose downs her drink, and turns away. She’s just saved the world. It’s time to party.

Crying isn’t so bad when you’re doing it with friends, Finn thinks. Especially when your friends are the best people you’ve ever known, and you’ve just saved the entire universe from everything bad ever.

But there’s something wrong, and he notices it as soon as he pulls back from their hug.

“Rey?” he asks, studying her face. Her eyes are bright red, her cheeks puffed up, her nose running. “What is it?”

Her lip trembles, and then she sets her jaw.

“I’m okay,” she says firmly. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Poe says. “Come on. Over here.”

They sit beneath the body of the X-wing, surrounded by cheers of victory. Finn takes Rey’s hand, and Poe takes his, and she takes Poe’s.

“It’s - it’s about Ben,” she says, softly, looking at the ground. “Ben Solo.”

“Han and Leia’s kid?” Poe asks. “I thought he died ages ago?”

Tears hit the ground, and Finn’s heart drops. He squeezes Poe’s hand, hard.

“Shit,” mutters Poe. “Sorry.”

“Ben is not dead,” says Rey, her voice only a little strained. “He disappeared, just like that, and I don’t know where he went, and -”

“He disappeared? When?”

Finn squeezes Poe’s hand again. He’s a great pilot, and he talks exactly the way he flies. No rules.

“Just now,” Rey says. “Palpatine was - he was -”

“He did the lightning thing to all of us,” Poe interrupts. “And then?”

Rey takes a few deep breaths while Finn strokes her hand with his thumb, hoping it’ll help.

“Take your time,” he reassures her. “There’s no rush.”

She nods, shooting him a grateful glance.

“Ben and I are a dyad in the Force,” she begins, voice steadier now. “I don’t understand all of it, but it means I can… feel him. Always. We can talk to each other through the Force. We fought together against Palpatine. And then we - he - disappeared.”

Finn blinks. He can’t help but feel just a little wrong-footed. If Kylo Ren has turned to the light, then why hasn’t he been helping them before now? Why hasn’t Rey mentioned their connection?

“Sorry, but who exactly is Ben Solo?” Poe asks, looking exactly how Finn feels.

“Oh,” Rey realizes, her eyes widening. “He’s Kylo Ren.”

The first thing Ben knows is that it’s cold.

It’s really, really cold.

Specifically, it’s cold and wet, all the way down his left side where he is lying on the ground.

He groans, and opens his eyes. The light is white and harsh and bright; entirely unforgiving. He keeps his eyes narrowed in slits, and tries to sit up. Something is wrong with his balance, though, and he sways.

“Don’t sit up yet,” says a voice. Ben knows that voice like he knows himself - it’s the one that’s been inside his head all these years, not Snoke, not Palpatine, but the voice of light.

“Wh-who?” he asks, ignoring the advice and pushing himself up to sitting properly. He squints at his surroundings, finding them no less cold, white or bright than before.

“Here,” she says, and Ben is drawn to the left as if by a magnet. A black shape is visible against the snow, blurry in his still-muddied vision. Without needing to know why, he holds out his arms. Warm fur rubs against his hand, strange but familiar. A warmth settles in his lap, then, and a heavy purring thrums through him. He holds her tightly against him. He knows that she is his as he is hers, but he couldn’t say how or why.

After a little while, his eyes adjust properly, and he realizes that a fully grown black panther is sprawled in his lap, and he is totally okay with this.

“Excuse me,” he says, and it would be awkward if it wasn’t impossible for it to be, “But who are you?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” the panther replies.

“Hmm.” Ben wonders if he should be more disturbed by this development. “Well, do you have a name?”

The panther considers that. She is a person, not an animal, because it is clear to Ben that she really _considers_ it.

“I don’t think so,” she says finally, “But I’d like to.”

“Oh,” says Ben. “Well, maybe we can think of one, together.”

“I’d like that,” the panther purrs, and rubs her head against his shoulder.

They are broken out of their reverie by the sound of something solid sliding against ice nearby, and in a flash it all comes flooding back. Ben is suddenly incredibly aware that he has not the faintest clue where he is in the galaxy - if he’s even still in the galaxy. The panther leaps out of his lap, her ears pricked high. There isn’t any time to see the interruption, though, before it crashes straight into Ben. He has just enough time to feel the pain to his head and look around to see a heavy wooden sledge before he blacks out again.

“I’m sorry,” Poe repeats, not feeling very sorry at all, “Kylo Ren is - is - _Ben Solo?!”_

Rey and Finn glance at each other, and Poe rips his hands from their grasps.

“Oh, perfect,” he says. “You’re in on this together.”

“Poe, it’s not -”

“We’re not _in on it -”_

Poe holds up his hands and they fall silent. “Okay, it’s not like that, I get it. But when were you going to tell me?”

Rey and Finn share another glance, and Rey’s face is rigid with guilt.

“Honestly,” says Finn, grimacing, “I’d forgotten you didn’t know.”

Poe scoffs and rolls his eyes. It hurts, somewhere deep down, but he doesn’t acknowledge it and probably never will.

“So you’re forgetful, but you’re not assholes. Good to know. Where were we? Oh, right, that guy who destroyed planets, we’re sad about him dying now. Go on.”

“You don’t know what it’s been like for him,” Rey says fiercely, leaning forwards to lock eyes with Poe. “He’s been brainwashed since he was a kid, same as the stormtroopers.”

“Oh?” Finn squeaks. “But we - _I_ didn’t destroy planets.”

“You’re not Force-sensitive,” Rey dismisses him, “You don’t understand. I’ve seen his soul, and I trust him.”

Poe doesn’t like feeling undermined and wrong-footed. He likes Rey, though, and he trusts her. Is that enough?

Finn’s deep brown eyes are locked on Poe’s. Poe pushes down the immediate and familiar tug on his heart. Finn must be struggling with Rey’s unspoken plea in the same way he is.

“Look,” Poe sighs, rubbing his hand over his face, “What do you intend to do with this information? Now that he’s - missing, you said? Lost?”

“I’m going to find him,” Rey says instantly. Poe hasn’t known her for long, but anyone who’s been on a mission with her knows that this tone brokers no argument. There will be no diverting Rey from her path now, and the best thing anyone can do is to agree and support her.

“Fine,” say Poe and Finn in unison.

She grins at them and pulls them in for another group hug, this one a little awkward as they’re all sitting down.

“We’re here for you,” Poe mutters reluctantly, “But I’m not going to stop telling you when I think you’re being stupid.”

“I know,” says Rey, releasing them.

“And we think you’re being stupid now,” Finn adds.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Are you sure about this?” Poe asks desperately. Why can’t the Force just take a freaking break and let Rey get some real work done?

“I have to do this,” she says.

And that’s that. She has to.

Rey goes to bed early, because, of course she does. Finn has never known anyone who obeys their own strict schedule as well as Rey. Lights out at ten. No exceptions for a saving-the-galaxy afterparty. Finn is sitting with Poe next to a campfire, on the quieter edge of the celebrations. The Resistance is a mixed bag, with some exceptionally talented teenagers who don’t know how to pace themselves on alcohol, and the past generation, near-elderly and tucked up with hot chocolates.

If you’d asked Finn yesterday, he’d have said he had a lot to say to Poe once they were finished saving the world. But it’s not yesterday. And the metaphorical cat has got his tongue.

They sit in silence, gazing into the flames.

“Do you want a dri -”

“Yes,” says Finn gratefully, and Poe pushes himself up to fetch it. As he leaves, Finn breathes in Poe’s scent. It’s familiar, and homey, and it does something strange to his stomach.

Finn looks into the fire, at the embers glowing orange and red with heat at the center. They’ve been fighting for this victory so long it’s hard to remember anything else he wants. Like something pressed up against a viewscreen, it’s been blocking his vision of everything and anything. But, tucked in there somewhere deep within Finn, is something he wants.

Quite badly.

When Poe comes back, Finn accepts the drink, but puts it on the ground next to him. He turns to Poe, shuffling a little closer.

“What is it?” Poe asks. His voice is low and quiet.

“Did you ever think about what you’d do?”

“When?”

“After the war.”

Poe sighs and takes a long drink of his balmgruyt. “Not really. Thought I’d always be a pilot, but... Well, we’ve got bigger things to do now. A galaxy to run.”

“But what if - if there wasn’t any of that? What would you do?”

Poe shrugs, and says, “I’d probably just go back to contract work. Good money in it.”

Finn takes a deep breath. “What about us?”

“What about us?” Poe looks a little confused, but there’s something underneath that. Finn can’t tell what it is.

“I mean, you and me. And Rey. And Rose. And Jannah. And Chewie. And -”

“Do _not_ say 3PO.”

“- fine. BB-8.”

“Like I said, I... haven’t really thought about it.” Poe’s eyes meet Finn’s. A spark crackles in the fire. “Have you?”

Finn’s stomach does a flip. The way Poe is looking at him now, from underneath his wavy hair, biting his lip - it does things to him.

“Too much,” he admits. “It’s how I used to get to sleep at night. I’d imagine what would happen afterwards, and, well, everything would seem okay. Not okay… Better.”

“So what did you imagine?” Is Poe closer now, or is Finn’s vision playing tricks on him? He’s close enough to see the shine of the firelight flicker on his cheek.

“I imagined - it’s stupid. You’ll laugh.” He can feel his cheeks going hot. _Must be the fire._

“I promise I won’t,” Poe says. He’s definitely closer.

“I imagined we could... I don’t know. Go off together.”

“You, me, Rey, Rose, and all the others?”

“I mean, Rey’s busy. She’s always busy. I think Rose wants to go back to Cantonica and save those camel things. And Chewie - well. Maybe it could be… Just us.”

“Just us?” Poe asks, his eyes wide with an emotion that Finn is too scared to identify. His heart seems determined to leap out of his throat. Every beat echoes so loud in his ears that he’s sure Poe must be able to hear it.

“Just us,” Finn repeats, and next moment he’s almost knocked backwards off his seat as Poe kisses him. He really is knocked off his seat when Poe tries to climb into his lap, and they end up making out desperately on the ground. There are pine needles itching at the back of Finn’s neck, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not when Poe has him pinned to the ground and seems intent on making a thorough catalogue of Every Single Noise Finn Makes While Kissing Poe.

And then Poe whispers _I love you_ onto Finn’s lips.

 _Um,_ Finn whispers back, and then _oh shit._

Poe breaks away, searching his eyes. “You said - all that stuff - about going off together. Just us.”

He did. And he does want to.

“But -”

“But what?” Finn has always admired how genuine Poe is, in the way he smiles, the way he laughs. He is too genuine now in his anguish.

“I don’t know - I just need some - some time.”

“For what?” Poe’s eyes shine in the dim firelight. Finn feels sick with guilt.

“To think. I didn’t really realize that I - that we - until now.”

Poe stares at him, incredulous. “Until _now?”_

“There’s been so much -”

“- so I _was_ reading into everything? Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t, I can’t even - fuck.” Poe pushes off Finn and gets up, dusting himself off. “See you tomorrow.”

Finn props himself up on his elbows and watches Poe slink into the darkness. He doesn’t know exactly what he feels, but he’s going to have to try and figure that out. Right about now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my beta, Morrigan's Muse ♥

There is a faint ringing in the background. Much closer is the sound of wood on snow, and the gentle tug of inertia as the sledge turns corners.

“He must be part of the Magisterium,” a voice says. “Look at what he’s wearing.”

Someone scoffs. “He dresses like Evangeline. It doesn’t mean he’s with them.” This voice is higher, lilting and musical. The scorn sullies the effect somewhat, though.

“What else would he be doing out here?” the first voice asks.

“Maybe he’s on an adventure,” the second voice suggests, starting to sound excited. “He was on a special quest, to find the lost diadem of - of someone, and he was digging in the snow, but at the last second, his strength failed him!”

“Tsh,” the first voice returns. “Typical for a man. Overestimating his own strength.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know he’s looking for a diadem, and yet here we are.”

There is silence for a little while, apart from the rasping of the sledge over ground, and the faint panting of whatever is pulling it. As Ben begins to wake properly, he feels an unfamiliar warmth bloom in his chest. He doesn’t know how it’s connected with the second voice, but somehow it is.

“Don’t go getting attached to her,” the first voice speaks again, suddenly stern.

“Sorry.” The warmth disappears. “Tadeo’s only curious.”

“Like as not, we’ll have to throw him back into the snow where he came from.”

“But -”

“He’s human. He’s a _he_. I told you, we’re only bringing him back because -”

“- because of the prophecy?”

“Shhh!”

Silence falls again, for longer this time. Ben is too cold and tired to do much moving, but his alarm at being transported to a second mystery location from the first mystery location is substantial, so he tries. He wiggles his fingers. He opens his eyes, surprised to find it dark already. He tenses his stomach to try and sit up, but a stabbing pain in his ribs tells his brain to think better of it. Still, he tries. He achieves nothing more than rising half an inch off the wooden slats his back is resting on, agony washing through him, and falling back to lying down with a grunt of pain.

“Was that -”

“He’s weak as a kitten, don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere. Besides, we’re nearly there.”

Ben wishes he could object to the first statement, but his lips won’t move, apart from shaking with cold. He becomes very aware of his teeth chattering, a horrible sound that intensifies every time the sledge goes over a bump.

“Sisters!” a voice calls out, barely there beneath the sledge-sounds and howling wind. “Who goes there?”

“S’Jorjie and Lilibet,” the first voice from the sledge calls back. “And a stranger. We’re taking him to Queen Quinlan.”

“Him?” The voice is much closer now. Ben can hear the woman’s footsteps, now that the sledge has stopped. “The Queen is in an important meeting, Jorjie. You won’t be able to see her till morning.”

“Well, this could be important!” the second voice - Lilibet - insists. “We think he could be -”

“We understand, don’t we, Lilibet? The Queen has a lot of important duties. We can wait for morning, but he can’t. Not without getting him warm and fed.”

“Ugh,” says the new voice. Ben feels something poke his ribs, hard, and he lets out a surprised yelp of pain, but he can’t manage to move to protect himself. “Those need binding, too.”

“What will we do?” asks Lilibet.

“We’ll go and see Maja,” says Jorjie, “And she’ll know what to do.”

“Don’t give him food,” says the other voice.

“But -”

“He won’t die before morning, and we can’t risk being bound to his safety. Don’t give him food.” Footsteps sound again, walking away from the sledge, and then they are on the move again.

“We have to give him food!” Lilibet cries after a few moments. “Don’t we, Jorjie?”

“We’ll see what Maja says. Isak’s not wrong to be careful.”

Lilibet makes a series of indignant noises, but doesn’t speak again.

Ben’s eyelids warm with light, and he opens his eyes just in time to see glowing windows set in little stone huts begin passing by. One of the huts is larger, more of a house, and has a long wooden strip protruding from the outside. There are several women sitting huddled on the landing, and they all turn to stare at Ben as he passes by. He stares back until they are out of sight.

The sledge stops outside a stone hut that looks very much like the others on first glance, but when Ben looks closer, he sees that the outside is decorated. There are strange symbols painted on all of the rocks, in a multitude of clashing colors, and little sparkles of light, hung in ribbons around the whole thing. Ben tries to focus on them, to see what they’re made of, but he’s pulled roughly from the sledge and slung over someone’s shoulder in the blink of an eye.

“Ow,” he groans.

“Quiet,” comes Jorjie’s voice. She adjusts her grip on him, and Ben flushes with embarrassment despite the cold. He hasn’t been manhandled like this since he was a child. The memories aren’t good.

Someone knocks on the wooden door ahead of them - presumably Lilibet - and the creak of the hinges sounds almost immediately.

“Come in,” a calm voice drifts across the snow. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Do you think he could be the one from the prophecy?” Lilibet asks in hushed tones as Ben is plopped onto a canvas stretcher next to the fire.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” says Maja, coming to stand beside the stretcher. She is not the grizzled, wise old healer Ben was imagining, but looks to be almost middle-aged, with brown hair pulled into a practical ponytail, and skin that reflects an ocher color in the firelight. The fattest pigeon Ben has ever seen is perched on her shoulder. It - she - winks in Lilibet’s direction.

“Ngh,” manages Ben, moving his head to the side.

“He speaks!” Maja laughs, and puts her hand on his forehead. He tries to turn his face away, but her steady hold is too strong for him in his current state. “Lie still. We’ll have you up and about in no time.”

She bustles out of sight, the sound of rustling blankets and tinkling tools emanating from a darkened corner.

“Hello,” says Lilibet, kneeling by Ben’s face. “I’m Lilibet.”

He blinks at her, entirely unsure of what she wants him to do. Her face swims a little in his vision, but he can see her intricate hairdo, black braids swirling into a bun with little streaks of red and orange. And nestled in the center of it, fast asleep, is a pale grey dove. Lilibet looks at him for a long moment, and then looks across the room at someone else.

“Leave him alone,” says Jorjie. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

“But I don’t want to miss anything!” Lilibet exclaims. Her voice hurts his ears this close, but Ben doesn’t have the energy to flinch. “What if the Queen visits while I’m not here?”

“You can sleep in the spare bed here,” Maja says, her legs, wrapped in a brown linen cloth, reappearing.

“Oh, thank you!” Lilibet bounces up, hugs Maja, and leaves the room.

Maja chuckles. “She’s a lovely kid.”

“She’s going to be trouble. Already is.” Jorjie’s voice is gruff, but still sounds pleased.

“She’s good for you,” Maja says, and takes Ben’s jaw in her hand. He makes a faint noise of alarm in the back of his throat, but it is somewhat undercut by the consistent chattering of his teeth. “It’s alright, it’s only poppy. I’m going to put you to sleep while I work.”

“Ghhhh,” he gargles, almost choking on the warm milk sliding down his throat.

“That’s it, nice and easy,” Maja says. “See you in the morning.”

Ben is tired of blacking out. Ben is tired of being helpless. Ben is tired. But that only assists him into falling headfirst into unconsciousness once again.

Rey wakes, for the first time in months, without a feeling of despair looming over her. It’s weird. A good weird. She pushes herself out of bed and leaves the cabin, stumbling out of the Falcon into bright light.

“Hello, sleepyhead,” Poe greets from his sprawled position on a nearby rock.

“What time is it?” she mutters, rubbing her eyes.

“It’s almost midday.”

Rey feels her mouth drop open. She’s never slept in that late in her entire life.

“It’s _what?_ Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Figured you could use the sleep,” Poe says, grinning. “Feeling better?”

She has to admit, she does feel better - a lot better - but she doesn’t have to admit it to Poe. She shrugs offhandedly, and takes the plate he gives her full of boiled mealgrain. She watches him work on BB-8 while she eats. It’s been a while since the droid got a fine-tune, and he whirrs away happily as Poe works, showing off his new tools.

“That’s very cool,” Rey says when he extends a new arm with a suction device. “You can pick up whatever you like now!”

 _“Beeee-boo-bop_ _,”_ he agrees, and takes the spoon Rey offers him. He rolls around with it happily. _“Whee-oo-eeer?_ _”_

“Yeah, where _is_ Finn?”

Poe shrugs and sniffs, looking down at the ground. “Dunno.”

“Well, I need to see him before I go.”

“Go where?”

“To find Ben.” Poe is looking at her oddly. “I told you, last -”

“You don’t have a lead on him, though. He could be anywhere in the galaxy.”

“He’s not here, though,” points out Rey. “So I have to go.”

Poe sighs, and looks away.

“What is it?” she demands.

“You’re always going off on your own now. I know it’s super secret Jedi stuff or whatever, but it really hurts Finn when you do.” Poe’s eyes are deeply expressive, and he uses them to maximum effect now. Rey’s heart clenches with guilt.

“I know. I think that’s why Jedi don’t usually have - well - that many friends.”

Poe snorts. “That’s a bullshit excuse.”

“Maybe, yeah.” Rey doesn’t know what she can do. “I can’t stay here, though. I have to go. I really do.”

“You want to go,” says Poe. Rey opens her mouth to argue, but she can’t lie. She does want to go. She wants to find Ben. “It’s okay. Just… say a proper goodbye to Finn, this time. Alright?”

She nods, and looks down at her empty bowl. “I will. I promise.”

“Good,” says Poe gruffly, and gets up.

“Poe?” she asks quickly, before he can leave.

“Yeah?”

“You know I love you, right? And Finn.”

“I know,” he says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Love you, too. We’re family. You know that.”

She does, but it’s nice to hear it said openly once in a while. Her heart feels light and happy as she watches him go.

Rose’s head is pounding, and her eyes are having trouble dealing with any amount of light.

“Rose!” Someone is shaking her. “Rose! Wake up!”

She groans, and turns over to bury her face in her pillow.

“Roooo-oooose.” It’s Finn.

“What?” she mutters, not caring how muffled her voice might be.

“Come on,” he says, shaking her shoulder again, “Come and meet Rey.”

Her brain sputters to a stop, makes a series of alarmed noises, and then she’s sitting up and the world is spinning around her.

“Woah, woah.” Finn steadies her. “How much did you have?”

“Not enough,” she says, and launches herself out of bed. She’s still wearing her mechanic clothes, so she doesn’t need to get dressed. Perfect. “Let’s go meet Rey.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Finn is studying her movements with a worried eye.

“M’fine,” she insists, dragging her boots on. “Let’s go.”

Rey is standing by the Falcon. She looks majestic, a light breeze whipping through her loose strands of hair, her staff bound across her shoulder, and two lightsabers on her belt.

“Hi,” she says, her face brightening as she sees them. “You must be Rose.”

“Nngh,” Rose manages, more than a little dazed. “I mean - yes. It’s Rose. Rose is me.”

Rey grins and holds out her hand. Rose takes it, expecting to shake, but Rey pulls her in for a hug. She suddenly regrets not changing her clothes.

“Finn’s told me so much about you,” Rey says, pulling back. “Thank you for saving him when I couldn’t be there.”

“Oh,” says Rose. “Oh, that’s - fine. I mean, it was nothing. Well, it was something, but - you know, I was happy to.”

“Thanks,” Rey says, her eyes bright and intense. “Really.”

Rose doesn’t know what to say, so she just smiles.

“Rey is going on a Jedi mission,” says Finn after a moment, “And Poe and I can’t go with her.”

“Why not?” Rose asks.

“They’re busy trying to run the galaxy,” Rey says, elbowing Finn in the ribs, “Or so they tell me.”

Finn rubs the spot in mock pain, but grins at Rey.

“Where are you going?” Rose asks.

“I don’t know.” A thoughtful look crosses Rey’s face. “I’m looking for someone. The Force will guide me. D’you wanna come?”

Rose jolts with adrenaline, looking from Rey to Finn and back.

“I told her how good a mechanic you are,” Finn says. “And, you know, you’re good at keeping people alive too.”

“I... I guess,” she says. She’s trying not to think about everyone she lost yesterday. She hates making decisions like that - hates that she’s good at it. It keeps more people alive, though, and that’s everything.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” says Rey, looking a bit disappointed.

“No! No! I’d love to come!” Rose says, blushing, fighting the urge to latch herself to Rey’s leg and cling on for life.

“Great!” says Rey, beaming. “We’ll be off in ten minutes, then. Or do you need longer?”

“Nope,” says Rose, who definitely needs longer. “I’ll be back in five.”

“So,” Finn starts, as Rose runs off. “You’re leaving. For how long?” He tries not to let an edge creep into his voice. He really does.

Rey still flinches. “I don’t know.” She turns to him. “Finn, I’m sorry that it’s always like this.”

“I - what?” Finn can’t look away from her eyes, as full of pain as they are.

“You deserve a better friend than me. Someone who’s there for you.”

Finn bites his lip. “No, Rey - you’re -”

“I’m not there for you,” she goes on, unstoppable, “Though I wish I could be. Even though the war is over, it’ll never be how - how you want it.”

“How I want it?” he repeats.

She shrugs. “Didn’t you want to run away together? You, me, Rose, Poe? Get away from this whole mess. Start again.”

He did. He’s not so sure that Poe would come anymore.

“It was never going to happen,” he says, trying to shrug it off. “I know that.”

Rey puts a hand on his shoulder, and tries to smile. “I just want you to know - I would have come with you. If we didn’t have to fight. If there weren’t any Jedi missions.”

“If you never knew Ben,” Finn adds, and she nods.

“That too. I just wanted to say - sorry. For hurting you. For leaving you. For being a terrible friend.”

“You’re _not_ a terrible friend,” Finn says firmly, and pulls her into a hug. “You’re the best person I know, and you’re always being put into impossible situations. You’re a great friend. The best friend.”

Rey hugs him back, very tightly.

“Can’t - breathe -” he wheezes, and she lets go, grinning.

“Toughen up,” she says, punching him on the arm, and disappears into the Falcon. She pops back after a moment, though, yelling, “And tell Poe how you feel already!”

Finn forces a smile on his face, and raises a hand in farewell, trying not to think about how thoroughly he messed up telling Poe how he felt.

Rose is back in five minutes, unchanged, unwashed, and out of breath - but she has brushed her teeth, which she considers a small personal victory. She also has her meager belongings collected in a duffel bag. She skids to a halt in front of the Falcon and races up the ramp. Rey is already in the pilot’s seat with Chewie beside her.

“Hi!” says Rose, like an idiot.

“Hey,” answers Rey, turning her head to give her a smile. “Make yourself at home. If you want something to do, you can check out the compressors. Poe hasn’t checked them since -”

“- his light speed skips,” Rose sighs. “That bastard gets lucky way too often.”

“Right? And Finn always takes his side.”

“They always take each other’s side.”

“Little shits,” Rey mutters, grinning, and stabs a large grey button. “Oops! No, it’s okay, I’m stopping it, Chewie!” A few more button stabs later, the Falcon is airborne and taking off. Rose doesn’t bother to strap in, instead grabbing bars around the edge of the corridor and edging her way to the bunks. One has a lot of Wookiee fur in it, one has an X-wing helmet, one has a perfectly round pet basket (BB-8 is extremely spoiled), and the other, Rose claims for herself. As she swings her bag up, the familiar navel-wrench of hyperspace hits, and her bag unclips.

“Really?” Rose asks the contents, now spread defiantly across the floor. “Did you have to?”

“Let me help,” says Rey, appearing in the doorway.

“It’s okay, really!” Rose sputters, bending down to pick up her underwear and hastily shoving it back in her bag. “You should be steering the ship with, I don’t know, the Force or something.”

“Well, I asked the Force what to do, and it said to come and help you,” Rey grins. Rose thinks she’s joking, but it’s hard to tell.

“Thanks,” she says, and they manage to get everything back in her bag in a matter of moments. Rey buckles it up and pats it lightly.

“Good as new.”

Rose notices something poking out beneath Chewie’s bunk. “Hey, what’s...” She bends to pick it up.

“Oh!” Rey takes the old book from her, carefully, reverently. “It’s one of the last Jedi texts. I try to keep them safe, under my pillow...” But she trails off, her eyes scanning something on the page.

“What is it?” asks Rose, peering over her shoulder. It’s all in some kind of cipher - it looks pretty basic, but it’s not readable on first glance.

“This symbol, here.” Rey puts her finger next to one of the diagrams. It’s the same symbol that Rose and her sister wore on their necklaces.

“Two halves of a whole,” she whispers.

“Exactly. Balance. Two halves that chase one another, to find an equilibrium.”

“And why is it in that book?”

Rey lets out a breath. “It’s the symbol for a dyad.”

Poe watches the Falcon soar away through the blue sky, and sighs. Maybe things would be easier with Finn if Rey was there to act as a buffer. Then again, maybe not. Sometimes Poe looks at her and gets the feeling that she knows entirely too much about the way he feels for Finn.

“General,” says Finn’s voice behind him, and Poe jumps.

“General,” he replies, trying to grin casually while his heart does its best to pierce its way through his chest. “So. What now?”

Finn looks at him, and he looks at Finn, and he desperately wants Finn to understand what he’s asking, _what now, what about us?_

“Running a galaxy, I guess,” says Finn. Poe’s heart sinks. Is this what they’re doing? Ignoring it? Pretending like it never happened?

“Right.” He lets the silence stretch out unbearably. Lets Finn be the one to break it.

“Did Leia ever tell you how to, um, start? Running a galaxy?”

Poe shrugs, and doesn’t answer. He doesn’t owe Finn anything _._ Well. Except his life.

“We need to form a council,” Finn goes on, “With people we trust on it. I was thinking, we could ask Lando, and Jannah, and... are you even listening to me?”

Poe nods, but doesn’t say anything else.

“Good. Um. Who else do you think?”

Poe doesn’t want to answer. He wants to sulk. But it’s the fate of the fucking galaxy at stake. He might not be force-sensitive, but he can sure as hell feel Leia’s ghost peering over his shoulder.

“Klaud,” he suggests reluctantly. “And R2, and 3PO.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Finn says quickly. “Good choices. Really good choices. I’m gonna go write this down. We should try and meet with everyone soon - get things sorted before anyone else can come knocking.” Poe nods, his stomach clenching into a ball of pain, and Finn starts to walk away.

He can’t let him go just like that, though, and so he calls, “Finn?”

“Yeah?” Finn turns around, his eyes finding Poe’s. Anger washes through him, anger amplified by hurt and the sleepless night he wasted worrying about Finn. He wants to say _fuck you, I love you, I hate you, don’t come near me, be beside me forever._ He doesn’t.

What he actually says is, “If you want to talk, I’m - I’m here. For anything.”

A muscle jumps in Finn’s jaw, and he nods, but he doesn’t stay. He doesn’t walk back. He doesn’t smile at Poe. Instead, he turns away, walking quickly. Fleeing from him.

Poe wants to go after him, to grab his arm and demand an answer. But it’s one thing to take risks with a ship, and another to take risks with his heart. He grits his teeth, takes a deep breath, and goes to talk to the senior Resistance officers. They really do need to get their shit sorted out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Morrigan's Muse for betaing 💖💖💖 if you enjoy, please leave kudos and comments, they make my day!

Ben wakes up from inky blackness with a start. He still can’t sit up, but it’s less due to weakness, and more to do with the panther lying on top of him.

“Oh,” he grunts. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she says, and gracefully slides off him. “Oh, that’s much better.”

It really is. Ben tests his ribs with a few breaths, and the pain is still there, but it’s not raw and grating like it used to be - just a dull ache, one that he knows from experience will heal with time. He sits up and waits for the room to stop spinning. The fire is little more than glowing embers now, and he pulls the heavy blanket tighter around him, shivering.

“Oh, hello,” someone says, and Ben starts. Maja comes into view, her woodpigeon in exactly the same place and position on her shoulder as last night. “Feel better?”

“Much,” Ben answers warily. He doesn’t want to trust her, but she’s bound his ribs, tended to his wounds, and given him a warm, dry place to sleep - there’s little choice.

“And are you going to thank me? I had plans last night, you know. I could have spent it a thousand other ways.” The woodpigeon gives him a beady stare. Ben feels exposed, despite the blanket.

“Thank you,” he mutters, looking down.

“There, that wasn’t so hard. Now, in return for all that time, I have some questions I’d like answered.”

Ben stiffens, and looks around the shelves to see tweezers, scissors, pliers, and knives. His nails begin to itch. The panther hisses at Maja, who holds up her hands.

“No need to be so alarmed,” she says, her eyes round and curious. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Ben,” he says, his mouth going dry around the name. “Ben Solo.”

“Are you sure about that?” Maja asks. Ben feels his shoulders tense.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks too quickly.

She raises her eyebrows. “Er, I don’t know. It was a - never mind. And your dæmon?”

“I’m sorry?” Ben doesn’t know the word.

“Your dæmon.” Maja’s woodpigeon gives him a withering look.

“My... my what?”

Maja’s eyebrows rise so far they nearly disappear into her knitted cap. “You don’t know your own dæmon’s name?”

“What’s a dæmon?”

“Oh, shit.” Maja blows out a long breath, her eyes going round as saucers. “You _are_ the one from the prophecy.”

“What prophecy?” Ben is getting sick of not knowing things.

“I can’t tell you,” she says quickly. “Er. How much did you hear last night?”

“About what?”

“Never mind. It’s - it’s fine. Your dæmon is - she’s right there.”

Ben follows her gaze to his panther. “Oh. I was going to ask about her.”

“Dæmons are... I don’t know how to explain this. They’re a piece of you. A piece of your soul. They express who you are, but they’re different. They have lives of their own. They stay close to you. They _are_ you. But not.” Maja raises a hand to her woodpigeon - her dæmon - and she pecks at Maja’s fingers affectionately.

Ben takes all of this in, and places a hand on his dæmon’s head in wonder. “They’re an expression of our Life Force.”

“Exactly.” Maja looks pleased. “And she needs a name.”

Ben looks at his panther, and she looks at him.

“Asa,” she says. “My name is Asa.”

“Asa,” Ben murmurs, letting his thumb drift over her velvety ears. It’s the first time he’s been able to get a good look at her, and now he does, he sees she has a prominent scar down the left side of her muzzle.

A breathless Lilibet bursts into the room, cheeks flushed and panting hard, her dove dæmon somehow still balancing atop her braids.

“Good morn -”

“The Queen is coming!” she interrupts Maja. “Now!”

“Thank you for letting me know, Lilibet.”

Lilibet looks from Ben, to Maja, to Ben again. “Did you hear me right?”

“The Queen is coming, and she’ll decide what to do with Ben here. What else is there?”

Lilibet clearly didn’t anticipate the lack of reaction. She opens and closes her mouth, then jumps as a knock sounds on the front door.

“Maja?” a voice calls. “Can I come in?”

Lilibet scurries out of the way, coming to stand behind Ben’s stretcher, quivering with excitement. Her dæmon flutters down to Asa, and they seem to talk together. Ben watches, fascinated. The same faint warmth of connection from the sledge last night echoes through him.

“Of course,” Maja says, going to open the door. “My Queen. Please make yourself at home.”

Queen Quinlan enters the little hut. She is indistinguishable from the other women other than a little more finery in her garments - some delicate embroidery about the hem of her dress, but it is still cut from the same linen as the others. She has a crown of purple flowers threaded through her hair. And at her feet is, Ben presumes, her dæmon - a huge black and white bird that he can’t identify.

“My Queen,” Lilibet murmurs, bowing her head.

“Lilibet, isn’t it?” the Queen asks, smiling. “Thank you for bringing this stranger to safety last night. Jorjie tells me you acted quickly and with courage. Well done.”

Lilibet lets out a faint squeak of acknowledgment, and goes bright red. The Queen walks forwards to Ben, and looks down at him, sitting there. He thinks that maybe he should smile, or speak, or - something. He ends up doing nothing.

Maja clears her throat, and comes to stand next to the Queen.

“He’s just woken up, so don’t expect too much.”

“I don’t expect anything,” says Quinlan.

Ben realizes after a second that she is insulting him.

“I’m right here, you know,” he says. Quinlan doesn’t smile.

“I know. You and your broken soul.”

Ben feels an echo of something deep and powerful flash through him. It’s the Force, and it’s not him using it.

“What are you -” he begins, but Quinlan has laid her hand on his face before he can finish. With no defensive barriers at the ready, she enters his mind in a second.

“Focus your mind,” Leia urges. Ben tries. He really does. But he can’t seem to find it, whatever it is.

“Ow!” The training blaster hits him again. He pulls off the helmet and tosses it to the ground.

“This is pointless,” he says. “I’m not getting anywhere.”

“You have a great power, Ben. You need to learn how to control it.”

“Can I go to my room?”

“Fine.”

Ben leaves without another word. His mother will have important meetings to go to, anyway. She won’t miss him. When he gets to his room, he slams the door, and a low voice speaks in his head.

_She doesn’t understand you like I do._

He is forced to agree.

Ben is having a nightmare. In the nightmare, he is a stormtrooper, and he is under orders to kill his family. His hands raise the blaster, and point it. He pulls the trigger. Down goes his mother, his father, Chewie, and Luke. None of them even seem surprised. As the blaster is drawn inexorably towards the last figure, it pulls down its hood.

It’s Ben, but it’s not. He’s wearing a long black robe, and he is bigger, older than now. His face is an awkward length, and it trembles with anger. The Ben-that-is-not-Ben takes out a glowing red lightsaber and points it right at the Ben-that-is-really-Ben.

He pulls the trigger, but evil Ben deflects it. He fires again, and again, and again, but the older Ben is stronger with the Force, and doesn’t break a sweat. He smirks as Ben’s attempts grow more desperate, growing closer and closer.

“Please,” Ben gasps, but it’s too late. His dark side swings the lightsaber, and there is a sizzle and a crunch of bones breaking.

When Ben wakes up, sweating and heart pounding, the voice speaks again.

_The only way you can win is to become him._

Ben is older now, and he is sick of being told to focus his mind. His father is gone on another one of his ego trips, leaving his mother with more than ever to do and less time for him. The only person who does have time for him is Uncle Luke, who is coincidentally the only person he doesn’t want to spend time with. Luke is obsessed with the dark side: namely, staying as far away from it as possible. He asks Ben pointed questions at every chance he gets.

“Has that voice been back?” Luke asks, gripping Ben’s shoulder.

Ben regrets ever telling his mother about it, because of course she’d told Luke, who’d proceeded to never ever shut up about it.

“No,” he lies, “I told you, that stopped ages ago.”

“Tell the truth,” Luke commands. Ben feels the ripple of the Force brushing through his mind, trying to iron out the creases of doubt, to unfold and expose the lies.

“I am,” he says, and focuses on presenting a uniform front for Luke to glide over like the voice told him.

 _You’re getting better at that,_ it praises him. _Well done._

“Hm,” says Luke, his forehead creasing. “Alright then.”

Only a week later, Ben is woken up by loud voices down the corridor. He scrubs his eyes and gets out of bed, padding towards the noise on bare feet.

He stops when he realizes they’re talking about him.

“The kid’s hearing voices! Leia, you need to talk to him, dammit!” It’s his father.

“Are you sure he was blocking you, Luke? I haven’t - he shouldn’t know how to do that. How does he know how to -”

“I’m sure,” Luke’s quieter voice echoes. “He’s been practicing.”

“With who?” Leia asks.

“These fucking voices,” Han says, raising his voice. “They’re taking him away from us! They’ll turn him into - I don’t even know what!”

Ben feels it like a punch to the gut. He covers his mouth with a shaky hand.

“I haven’t got time for this. I have the Hoth delegation arriving in two days, and a charity ball next week - Luke, can’t you take care of it?”

“Leia, he needs you.”

Ben bristles at that. He doesn’t need his mother. He doesn’t need anyone. He’s just fine on his own.

“He can have me in two weeks. Please, Luke.”

“He doesn’t like me. I can’t get through to him.”

There is the distinct sound of his father sighing.

“Well, do _you_ want to have a go at talking to him, Han?” Leia snaps.

Han mumbles something unintelligible. Ben doesn’t want to hear any more. He goes back to bed and draws the covers up over his head, hiding from the horrible truth. No one wants him. No one can be bothered with him. Not even when he’s turning into -

 _Something they fear. Something powerful._ The voice is accompanied by a flash of giddy victory: the prospect of being more powerful than the adults in Ben’s life is tantalizing. Maybe then they’d finally shut up.

Ben is not an easy teenager. His mother tells him that with words. His father doesn’t need more than a single look. But Uncle Luke refuses to admit it, and refuses to give up on him. It’s infuriating.

“You will master it,” he says. “Believe in yourself.”

But it takes so much effort to control his power, raw and hungry for darkness. And why should he? To make Luke feel better about himself? To avoid the Skywalker line ending in humiliation and failure?

_He is scared of your power. Scared of what you will do with it._

Ben doesn’t like to admit that he is a little scared of his own power too. But then there is a night, when he is woken by the green of a saber hovering over his head, a wildness in his Uncle’s eyes, and he is more grateful than ever for the Force that lies within him. He chooses Kylo as his new name, and thinks it would sound better if it belonged to an order. _Not_ the Jedi.

Kylo’s days slip by easily. He acts more as a conduit for the Force pouring out of him than anything, doing what the voices tell him, hoping desperately to live up to his grandfather’s name. He feels as if he’s been on the edge of unbalancing for years, and has finally begun to slide endlessly into the night.

It’s so much easier like this.

Until something breaks him out of it. It’s not anything solid, nothing that will do anything to halt his trajectory into darkness, but it’s a hitch, and it makes him pay attention.

 _She_ makes him pay attention.

She is her own conduit, though she doesn’t realize it. Kylo’s never felt anything like the Force that streams from her, except... his own. There is a moment, pushing against each other on a snowy cliff, when Kylo is able to win the fight. And he doesn’t.

He lets his saber push against hers, feels the mess and darkness of his own power align with hers, this strong and untrained woman. Like a key fitting into a lock. The tension is magnetic, a steady pulse that pulls and pushes. Kylo can only watch as she closes her eyes and breathes deep. He feels her Force settle. He feels his begin to do the same.

That’s before she rips her saber away from him and begins to fight with a renewed spirit.

Kylo isn’t new to obsession. His mind tends to veer down one track and stick there, forever. That’s why he has Darth Vader’s helmet on a plinth. But he hasn’t ever felt so drawn to someone like this before. Every bone in his body tells him that Rey is the most important person in the universe.

And then he starts to see her.

At first, he’s sure they’re hallucinations, or some training exercise Snoke has manifested for him. Is he supposed to resist temptation? Because he’s never been good at that. First the dark side, and now this.

He touches her hand, and it makes him feel like a whole person again. He falls for her, and it should feel like the ground being pulled out beneath his feet at the speed it happens - but it doesn’t. It feels like he’s been falling forever, and only just now arrived where he’s supposed to be.

It feels right, and that terrifies him.

Ben is returned from his memories with all the grace of a cargo ship dumping its load, unceremoniously and without care. He jolts backwards, falling off his stretcher and banging his already-bruised elbows hard against the stone floor. He glares at the Queen.

“I don’t appreciate you looking around my head like that.” He tries his best to sound menacing. It’s hard when he’s half-on, half-off his sickbed, though.

Her face paling, she takes two shaky steps back.

“He’s a witch,” Quinlan says. Both Maja and Lilibet gasp.

“What?” Ben asks.

“That’s impossible,” says Maja, shaking her head. “He’s a - well, he’s a _he.”_

Ben is indeed a he, and not ashamed of it, but Maja’s tone makes him feel almost like he should be insulted.

“He’s from another world,” says Quinlan, “Where Dust - works differently.”

“Dust?” Ben asks. He is ignored. Again.

“What kind of world?” Lilibet asks. She is also ignored. Her dove dæmon pops her head up indignantly.

“You know what this means, Maja.” Quinlan takes her arm to twist the other woman to face her. Maja does so, but doesn’t seemed thrilled about it, and tears her eyes away from Quinlan after a second. _“Maja.”_

“I know,” Maja says, sighing. “The prophecy.”

“What,” Ben grits out, “Is this prophecy? That’s the third time you’ve -”

“We have much to gain from his teachings. Bring him to me when he is healed.” And with that, Quinlan sweeps from the hut, her dark grey cloak swooshing behind her. Her dæmon hops after her, slightly less dignified on his webbed feet.

Maja sits down heavily and puts her face in her hands. There is a strange silence, during which Ben is acutely aware of his back aching and his inability to do anything about it. After a moment, Lilibet takes him by his shoulders and heaves him back up onto the stretcher - with ease. She can’t be older than seventeen, Ben thinks, surprised at her strength.

“How is he a witch?” Lilibet asks.

Maja looks up at them, takes a breath, and sits up properly. “He can use Dust in the same way that we can.”

“Dust?” Ben asks.

Maja looks over at Lilibet and nods encouragingly.

“Dust is the source of all life,” the girl recites, bouncing on her heels. “It flows all around us, and clusters around conscious beings. It is what ties us to our dæmons, and them to us. And we - witches - can manipulate it.”

Ben lets out a breath of realization. “It’s the Force.”

“Huh?” Lilibet says in confusion.

“It’s - exactly what you said. The Force is present in all living things. It drives us, makes us who we are, and if you study it - if you’re sensitive to it - you can learn to use it.”

“Wow,” says Lilibet, her eyes wide with awe. “That is so cool. I mean, you’re from another world, right? And we both have Dust! Isn’t it cool, Maja?”

Maja is frowning, studying Ben intensely. “It’s very interesting. What sort of things do you use the Force for?”

Ben doesn’t flinch. He can choose his words carefully - he doesn’t need to lie. “The order I learned from - they said it was to be used for defense and knowledge. But it never really works like that. We use it to fight, most of the time.”

“To fight who?” Lilibet asks with wide eyes.

Ben shrugs. “The other side. We’ve been at war for as long as I’ve been alive, and my parents before that, and their parents before them. I don’t really know when it started. I don’t think it’ll ever finish.” Asa bumps her head against his hand comfortingly.

“We use Dust for all sorts,” says Lilibet. “Maja uses it for healing, obviously, and I’m training to -”

“Shh!” says Maja, giving Lilibet a sharp look.

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, we’ll have you set right in a day or two. Then we’ll take you to the Queen, and she’ll - well - ask you some more questions, I suppose.” Maja turns to a cupboard, fetching a small vial that Ben recognizes as containing the sleepy milk. He doesn’t want to sleep. He wants to get out of here and find Rey and -

_Rey._

The memories he’s been so valiantly suppressing up until this point suddenly come raining down on him, except if the rain were actually hail and the hailstones were soccer-ball-sized ice-spheres of misery. The cavern, the fight, clawing his way up the cliff - and her, at the centre of it all. At the centre of him. The bond is still there, he can feel it, but her presence is not, and he is lost without her.

“No,” he mutters hoarsely, as Maja lifts the vial to his lips, “I need to get back to my world.”

Maja just tells him to drink up, and he tries to fight, but he only lifts his arm and suddenly he’s so tired it’s all he can do to not fall asleep on the spot.

“Rey,” he whispers, before Maja forces the drink down his throat. _Rey._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Morrigan's Muse for betaing, and to [waffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM) for my first ever moodboard! It's attached to the notes of chapter 1 if you want to check it out. Stay safe, sane and awesome my friends 💖✨

Rey makes the decision straightaway to tell Rose everything she needs to know. Poe trusts her, Finn trusts her, but more importantly, Rey trusts her. She takes in the Force dyad business with minimal fuss, nodding and saying ‘yep’ and making appropriately shocked noises at certain points in Rey’s story.

“And after he brought you back to life, he just… Disappeared?”

“Well,” Rey begins, “I - not quite.”

Rose looks at her expectantly. They’re both cross-legged on their bunks, talking across the skinny room. Rey has never had a woman her own age want to be her friend before, and it’s a little intimidating, but also really nice. She feels a pang of grief for Leia, who she never really had time to start missing.

“I kissed him,” Rey confesses, feeling her cheeks flushing. “Just before he disappeared.”

“Ohhhh,” says Rose, long and drawn out in realization. “I get it. So, all those times he appeared in your head... Did you...?”

“It was all so confusing at first,” says Rey in a rush. She hasn’t realized how much she wants to talk about it. “He was, you know, on the Empire’s side, and he used the dark side of the Force, so I just assumed he was evil. Irredeemable. How could he not be?”

“But...?”

“But he’s just scared. He’s insecure. He wants so badly for people to take notice of him, and he’s had Palpatine’s voice in his head his entire life.”

“My sister died while she was fighting for the Resistance,” she says slowly, “And if Kylo Ren hadn’t done everything he did, then... Maybe she’d still be alive.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Rey, and she is. “What he did hurt a lot of people. Killed a lot of people. I know that.”

“It doesn’t change the way you feel, though,” says Rose softly. “And besides, I don’t think anyone’s irredeemable. Ever. But I can’t imagine what it would take for me to forgive him.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know,” says Rose, “But you might.”

Rey puts her face in her hands. “I know he can be a good person. I _know_ Ben Solo is in there.”

“Do you love him?” Rose asks matter-of-factly.

Rey takes her face out of her hands, and sighs. “I do.”

Rose shakes her head and says, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Wait, wha -”

“It is not your responsibility to redeem him.” Rose hops out of her bunk and crosses the floor to hold Rey’s hands in hers. “I know you want to help, but this is something he has to do on his own. Or else I’ll never forgive him.”

“But we’re a -”

“Dyad or not, he made his choices, and if he loves you like you deserve, he’ll make up for them.”

Rey nods and bites her lip to stop it from trembling. “Thanks.”

“Anytime. You know my bunk is right here, so I’m going to be right here, right? If you, y’know, want to talk. Ever. I know Finn and Poe can be a bit useless when they’re together.”

Rey squeezes Rose’s hands in thanks. “Bets on how long it’ll take them to kiss?”

“They probably already have.”

Rey laughs, and everything seems easier. She hadn’t realized how much the worry about Ben was weighing on her, but Rose is right. It’s not her cross to bear, even if they are two halves of a whole. She has to trust that Ben Solo will come through.

Chewie is sitting at the holotable by himself, pushing his fighters around sadly. Rey makes a mental note to ask him how to play, later. She’s never really had time to learn. But right now, they need to figure out this dyad business.

Rey sits down next to Chewie and dumps the book on the table.

“Woooaaaurgh.”

“It’s going to help us find Ben.”

Chewie lets out a petulant whine at the name, but doesn’t respond otherwise. Rose emerges from the bunk room with BB-8 in tow.

“Come here, BB-8,” Rey says, doing her best not to baby-talk him and failing miserably. BB-8 doesn’t seem to mind, though, and rolls towards her excitedly. “Can you translate this?” She holds up the book for him to see.

_“Boo-boo-boo-weearh.”_ He scans the book three times. _“Dun-dun.”_

“Damn.” Rey looks back at the cipher. It’ll take her weeks to even know where to begin. She’s beginning to question why she was so quick to pack up from the Resistance base.

“It’s a Utapaulonian cipher,” says Rose, peering at it.

“Do you know it?”

“I know the basic system, it’s not too hard to crack. BB-8, can you do a frequency analysis for me?”

Rey watches as BB-8 projects a diagram. It’s a bar chart, and beneath each bar is one of the strange symbols.

“Is there something I can write on?” Rose asks, her fingers twitching. Rey pulls a draw out of the holotable and hands her the pad and pen inside. Rose draws out a six by six square, and begins to fill it in with the symbols, looking up at BB-8’s diagram between each one. Then she scribbles it all out and starts again.

“Rose?”

“Mm?” Rose doesn’t look at her.

“How long will this take?”

“Give me half an hour, and we can start translating.”

Rey blinks in surprise. “Really?”

“Shhh,” says Rose, frowning in concentration.

Rey grins in delight and turns to Chewie. “Is that long enough to learn how to play this?”

“Uuuuuooooh!”

“Brilliant.”

Rose really misses math. There’s a little bit of it in her job, but the vast majority is just numbers, and the creative problem-solving stuff was always more her style. It’s so logical and clean, the way she fills out her page with working, always getting closer to the answer, knowing exactly what she has to do and how to do it.

It only takes her twenty minutes to start translating. She starts writing it out, sighing with frustration at how manual the process is. And then she remembers BB-8.

“Hey, can you - oh - brilliant.” He scans her keys, scans the book, and projects the translated message for them.

**_Dyads in the Force_ **

_A rare and powerful bond, the Force Dyad has been the source of much interest to Jedi scholars. It is uncommon enough that there is no-one alive today who can describe the experience directly to us. It is unknown how this bond comes into being. Originally it was theorized to occur at birth: if two babies were born at the same time, perhaps it could tie their Force signatures together in some way. This was quickly dismissed when it was discovered that Dyads were not always the same age._

_In fact, most Dyads aren’t related. Another popular theory was the family connection - some resonance between them in the Force, perhaps. Indeed, Dyads are often siblings, but not always. So how does the bond come into being? It is an eternal mystery, and one that may never be solved. And so,_ _we turn from the why to the what._

_What do we know? What have we observed? We know that Dyads can communicate, reliably with practice, across any distance. This connection is both mental and physical_ _. It can only be observed by trained Force-users and is practically invisible otherwise._

_Potentially the most miraculous ability is the Force-revival. There is a well-known Jedi folk tale that tells the story of such a feat: the story of Feudore and Rydissius. During their wedding celebrations (note: Dyads often form romantic bonds), Rydissius was bitten by a foul creature of the dark side, the Hssiss. He died near-instantly, and Feudore was struck with an enormous grief. Having no other alternatives, he poured his own life force through the bond to Rydissius, who was miraculously returned to perfect health. Feudore, though, disappeared immediately, causing much confusion. Rydissius swore to find him, and set off on what Jedi historians call the Endless Adventure. Though the bond never waned, Rydissius never did find his love again. He swore he caught glimpses of him - a flash of his dark hair in the crowd, a hand brushing his out of nowhere. But Feudore was never found, and Rydissius died in his pursuit._

_The most popular theory for this phenomenon, which has been observed multiple times with similar results, is known as spring theory. In this model, the Dyad bond is likened to a spring, which is usually held taut between the two parties. When one dies, the spring is momentarily cut loose, and set free. Returning their life to them using the bond causes a sudden burst of energy, during which the spring recoils and snaps into place with a huge wave of Force, pushing the reviver through space (and potentially time). No Dyads have ever been reunited, however, and so the theory remains just that: a theory._

“Shit,” says Rey, and Rose jumps, shaken from her reverie.

“Not good,” she agrees. “Um, I think there’s another page. If you want to...?”

Rey flips to the next page and holds it up for BB-8.

_“Booo-booo-blurhhhhp._ _”_

“Wait, what?” Rose takes the book from Rey, and looks at it. There’s a large, frantic scribble across the cipher, obscuring it. The scribble is in Basic, though, and it says _EMPIRE COMING FORCE STRONG KASHYYYK WROSH -_ and then the scribble devolves into an illegible scrawl before diving off the page.

“Wrooooa,” Chewie yowls. “Aaaauuuyaoa.”

“To Kashyyyk,” Rey agrees. “To the Wroshyr tree.”

While Rey and Chewie go to the cockpit to set course, Rose asks BB-8 to try and decipher the symbols underneath the scribble. He beeps and blurps for a couple minutes, and then projects the few words he can make out.

_One way for the ---- -- reunite could -- -- one of the Dyad to die and -- be revived. This method is of course risky, ------, untested, and inadvisable. Nevertheless, it ---- be interesting -- observe ------. Revival ---- rely -- another Force-user to be present._

Rose shivers and slams the book shut.

Rose watches out the viewscreen once they’re out of hyperspace. Kashyyyk is huge, blue and green, so much green. It has craggy mountaintops that poke out of wispy white clouds, and once they descend through the fluffy white layer, Rose can begin to make out the trees. Chewie points out all the different varieties, but the most impressive ones are definitely the Wroshyrs. They’re gigantic, with huge, thick branches that weave amongst each other, forming convenient paths.

“How will we know which Wroshyr we need to get to?” Rey asks. She looks as overwhelmed as Rose feels.

“Wooooarrrghhrrrrgh,” explains Chewie.

“Right. Simple.”

Rey and Chewie land the Falcon on what Rose presumes is an old Empire outpost. It’s extremely overgrown now, though, and as they exit the Falcon they have to watch their step over the large ropes of ivy covering the platform.

Several locals have come up to the platform to greet them. Chewie runs towards them, flapping his great paws in excitement. They embrace and let out a sequence of very excited-sounding yowls. Rose doesn’t know nearly enough Shyriiwook to distinguish meaning from it, though.

She and Rey follow Chewie a little more slowly, and once they’ve caught up, Rey asks them which way the Wroshyr tree is. The largest Wookiee, who has a slightly more yellowish colouring than the others, points in a direction and wuffles happily.

“Thank you so much,” she says. “We’ll be out of your way soon.”

“Breeeeaagh!”

Once they’re out of earshot, Rose asks, “What did he say?”

“He said we’re welcome anytime, that Han was an honorary Wookiee, that they’re always happy to have Chewie back here, and that he likes my boots.”

Rose laughs. Rey doesn’t.

“Wait, actually?”

“Shyriiwook is a very expressive language,” says Rey.

“Wow.” After a few moments of silence, Rose adds, “Your boots are nice, by the way.”

“Oh, thanks! I stole them from Luke.”

They continue in silence until they reach the edge of the empire outpost and are faced with a very long expanse of open air beneath them.

“Er,” says Rose, “How do we _get_ to the Wroshyr tree, exactly?”

“No problem. Follow me.” Rey bends down and swings herself easily over the edge. “We’ll climb.”

Rose looks at Rey, then looks at the drop. “I - I don’t think I can.”

“Ah,” says Rey. “Well, I’ll just go alone.”

_“Beee-boop,”_ BB-8 boops insistently, standing next to a jet-black pair of doors.

“Oh,” says Rey, and hoists herself up. “Or we could just take the elevator.”

Once they’re out of the elevator, it’s into the mud. And there’s such a lot of mud. BB-8 watches them go sadly, antenna drooping as he’s left behind on the sturdy flat platform. Rose’s home was always dry and brittle, desperate for any rain - the prospect of mud was always an exciting one, much like the prospect of snow on planets like Kashyyyk.

_Suck-suck-plop,_ goes Rose’s shoe. _Suck-suck-plop,_ goes the other one. And so on.

After ten minutes, Rose decides she hates mud. It sticks to her shoes, to her thighs, to her hair, to her chin - how the fuck does mud get on her chin? - and it doesn’t come off. The path isn’t difficult, per se, it’s just extremely muddy.

_Suck-suck-plop._

“I’m starting to understand why Wookiees have such big feet,” Rey pants.

“Yep,” _suck-suck-plop,_ “We shoulda brought Chewie. Maybe he could,” _suck-suck-plop,_ “Carry us there.”

Rey laughs. _Suck-suck-plop._ She’s carrying her boots rather than ruin them, making her way through the mud in bare feet.

“Isn’t there a way,” _suck-suck-plop,_ “To levitate? Using the Force?”

“Yeah,” says Rey. _Suck-suck-plop._ “Just thought I’d keep you company.”

Rose laughs, and then looks over at Rey. She’s smiling, but… Is she serious? Are all Jedi like this? And why?

_Suck-suck-plop._

They take a break when they’re two-thirds of the way to the base of the tree, sitting on top of a rusted green speeder that’s half-submerged. The Wroshyr seems to loom over them now, the shadows of the longest branches beginning to loom over them from time to time. Rey looks up at it with undisguised awe, and Rose looks at her… with probably the exact same expression.

“How old do you think it is?” Rey asks.

Rose shrugs, and says, “Centuries, I guess. Maybe millennia.”

“Do you think someone planted it, all the way back then? Did they know how big it’d get?”

“That’d be poetic, but no. I think a bird probably shat out a seed with no thoughts to the consequences.”

Rey half-snorts, half-chokes, turning to look at her. “Sorry?”

“Well... S’true,” Rose says.

A little frown creases Rey’s brow. “I believe that everything is created with purpose. With the Force.”

“Oh. Well. Maybe you’re right.” Rose doesn’t want to offend Rey and her Ancient Jedi Beliefs or anything, but she’s not convinced.

“Why else would anything be created?”

“Well... I don’t think there has to be a reason to it. The Force follows life, right, so... maybe the tree was created by accident, and it shaped the Force around it, instead of the other way around.”

“You could be right,” says Rey, looking back at the tree. “And if you are, then we’re not the ones stumbling blind through some, some web of fate. Fate is stumbling blindly through the web of us.”

Rose doesn’t think much about fate at all, but it’s obvious Rey does, so she lets her have her quiet epiphany.

The moment is ruined a few minutes later, when their feet _squelch-plop_ back into the mud.

“If only there was another way,” Rey grimaces, flapping her boots at the mud.

Rose looks at her, and then looks at the speeder. Rey follows her gaze. They both smile the same feral _let’s-get-this-piece-of-shit-to-work_ smile at exactly the same time.

Half an hour, an improvised hammer, and what feels like a liter of engine grease covering Rose’s hands later, they’re flying over the marsh, throwing up a solid wave of sludge behind them.

“Whoooooooo!” Rose yells, clinging to Rey for dear life, and Rey echoes her.

For all her talk, Rey can be a reckless pilot, and she weaves through the trees at breakneck speed, kicking up mud as they skid and slide their way towards the Wroshyr. Rose watches it flash by, enjoying the ride while she can, and savors her dry - well, drier - feet. Every now and then, Rey cuts a corner a little too close, and a leaf flaps its way into Rose’s face.

The Wroshyr tree trunk comes into focus slowly and then all at once. It goes from being a solid pillar on the horizon to blocking out the whole horizon, easily three times as wide as the Falcon, the bark rough ropes that wrap around the tree. Rose could almost walk on the bark ledges, but she’s not _quite_ that small.

Rey brings the speeder to a halt in a clearing surrounded by the huge roots of the tree. Rose makes to get off, but Rey stops her, and doesn’t turn off the speeder.

“There’s an antigravity booster attached to the engine,” she yells over the sputtering of said engine. “Hang on tight!”

“Wait - Rey - are you sure - oh!” Rey has kicked the engine into gear again, and they’re hurtling at full speed towards the trunk. Rose hugs Rey tightly and buries her face in Rey’s shoulder, the immediate fear taking precedence over her potential future mortification. But they don’t crash. The speeder tilts upwards, and upwards, and Rey laughs, and Rose opens one eye - they’re speeding _up_ the tree. The speeder’s engine, boosted with antigravity, works fine on the trunk, and Rose opens her other eye to look around.

The view is incredible. Rose doesn’t want to look down, can’t possibly look down or her brain might just give up, but they’re passing layer after layer of green and luscious canopy, and she can’t help but be curious. She looks to the side and sees all the branches that Rey is, somehow, miraculously avoiding and looks back ahead. As they ascend, the final layer of canopy draws ever closer, like a dimpled green ceiling falling towards them.

“How do we get off?” Rose yells to be heard over the whipping of the wind.

“Good question!” Rey replies, altogether too calmly for Rose’s liking. “We might have to make a jump for it, once we’re at the top. On my count.”

Rose clutches Rey tighter in fright. A _jump?_ Oh no. She doesn’t remember signing up for this. No, Rose isn’t going to jump, not by any stretch of the imagina -

“Three! Two! One!” Rose closes her eyes tight shut and jumps with Rey as the speeder veers onto a side branch, and they land with a bump on something flat and hard. Rose opens her eyes tentatively.

They’re sitting on a flat section of a huge branch. It sways slightly in the wind, emitting an ominous creak that Rose feels in her bones.

“Aaaaaah,” she says. “Are we sure this is safe?”

Rey offers her a hand, pulling her up when she takes it. Just like that, Rose feels like a real Resistance fighter. Real Resistance fighters would do things like pulling each other up after they jumped off a speeder into a tree. Wouldn’t they?

“Nothing’s safe,” Rey shrugs, “But I’ve had worse.”

Rose peers over the edge of the branch. She’s not terrible with heights, but it’s enough to make her dizzy. She sees a little explosion way down there, the size of a fly to them now.

“Speeder’s a write-off,” says Rey.

“Damn. I wanted to take a look at the antigrav mod.”

“Chewie might know something about it.”

Rose makes a mental note to improve her Shyriiwook.

“So,” says Rose, looking around at the branches, “What are we doing?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my wonderful beta, Morrigan's Muse ♥ I'm sorry this is two weeks late, life happens! Let me know if you enjoy. I love writing Rose and Rey so fecking much ♥♥♥

“So,” says Rose, looking around at the branches, “What are we doing?”

That’s a great question, and not one Rey has prepared to answer at all. But they’re here now, and Rose is looking at her expectantly, and Rey doesn’t want to disappoint her.

“I’m going to meditate for a bit. The Force will help guide us.” Rey really hopes it will, anyway. She walks a little way along the branch and settles down in a smooth dip where the bark is peeled away, crossing her legs in her usual pose.

It’s a relief to relinquish control in meditation. She didn’t realize how tightly she’d been holding her breath over the last few days, but now she huffs it out in a deep sigh. Calmness flows through her. She takes a few deep breaths, establishing a rhythm, before reaching out to the Force.

It’s everywhere. It runs in thick currents over every surface of this tree, surrounding it in a protective layer. She can sense thousands upon thousands of echoes here: joy, anger, grief, pain... Any feeling she can think of, this tree has seen it. Rey reaches out a little further, feeling hundreds of creature-spirits. She feels Rose, an edge of doubt with an undercurrent of giddy success. She lets the Force take her off the branch, rising up a little, drifting this way and that in little eddies that form around her.

It strikes her then that something is off. The Wroshyr gives off a huge amount of Force, almost like a river, and it’s pouring out and away. Where is the balance? How does the Force return here? Rey had assumed that it was a cycle, that she was looking at the smaller part of a bigger picture, but - it’s not.

The Force washes over her, thick and fast, very determinedly going somewhere. It’s tempting to let herself be washed away, to let her spirit join the flow and become one with her surroundings. She reminds herself that she has a mission. She has a body. She is a knot in the Force, and one day will be untied, but - Rey flexes her fingers - not today.

Suddenly, she hears someone call _Rey,_ and her calm train of thought is thrown off the rails entirely. In the back of her throat, she tastes something milky and sweet, and feels a faint but insistent alarm.

 _Ben._ Without thinking, she launches herself towards the feeling, _into_ the feeling, and then she’s plummeting out of her body, falling headfirst into the light, racing to him.

Rey opens her eyes, and she’s in a small stone room. It’s cold, and she can’t figure out why her head is so close to the ground until she looks down and sees black furry paws. She tries to move her hands, and the paws wiggle. She pushes herself up, experimentally, swaying a little, and then she sees -

 _Ben,_ she cries out, and he looks across at her. His eyes are glazed and sleepy, but when he reaches out a hand to her face, they widen just a touch.

 _Rey?_ he asks.

 _It’s me,_ she tries to say, but her tongue feels weird. _I’m coming to find you._

 _Rey,_ Ben repeats, and his eyes fall closed. Rey pushes her head against his shoulder, trying to wake him, but she feels oddly sleepy too. She stumbles, and the floor rushes up to meet her, and then she’s racing back, back, out of the stone room, into the bottom of the whirlpool of Force she’d been sucked into.

She waits to be returned to her body.

And waits.

And with a shock, realizes that it’s not happening. She is trapped, as if she were bobbing in the bottom of a waterfall, within the Force. Without her body. Without Ben. Without a clue.

# # #

By the afternoon, they’ve formed their small council, and they’re on their way to Chandrila, where the Galactic Senate used to be. All of it is happening at lightspeed, and Poe keeps on thinking they must have forgotten something. Or someone. Maybe it’s just that the room feels empty without Leia. She would know what to do.

Finn has come to sit next to Poe and keeps looking over at him as if he wants to say something. Poe aggressively does not care. He focuses his attention on a 3D puzzle cube that Rey made for him, instead, and it does help to take his mind off things. If only the universe were like this; a puzzle to be solved. It would take a while, but Poe could click it all into place.

They’re starting to land when Finn finally works up the courage (or whatever he’s been working up) to speak to him.

“Poe?”

“What?”

“I need to tell you something.” There’s a resolution in Finn’s voice, a hardened edge that Poe has been longing for. But he’s been bitten twice in the last twenty-four hours already, and he doesn’t want it to happen again. If Finn thinks he’s going to play easy, he’s got another think coming.

“Can’t it wait?” Poe regrets saying it as soon as he does, but he had to. He can’t fall for this again.

“It can’t.” The ship touches down with a great shudder and boom, heavy enough that Poe wants to go into the cockpit and tell the pilot how to do it properly… but Finn’s eyes are steady on his, and - goddammit, when did Poe make the decision to look into his eyes? This isn’t good for him. This is never going to be good for him.

The others start exiting the ship around them, shuffling shawls and tinkering hooves on the metal, but Poe stays with Finn, sitting there, looking at him. When the footsteps fade, Finn takes a deep breath.

“I’ve known for a while,” he says.

“Known what?” _Stop sounding so desperate, Poe, you idiot._

“This is going to be a bit of a shock. Are you sure you want to -”

“Just tell me, dammit.” _Say it. Say you love me._

“I’m Force-sensitive.”

It’s doesn’t feel like a shock so much as it does a huge brick wall crashing into his face. Poe’s hopes don’t have the time to be disappointed, though they will later, wondering how he could be so stupid, berating his heart for its idiotic choices. No, in the moment, Poe can only clamp his mouth shut, try not to let his eyes bulge out of his head, and start to go through the ramifications of it.

Finn is Force-sensitive. He could be a Jedi. He could be like Rey.

The sudden isolation that hits Poe from that thought is enough to shatter his soul into tiny pieces. He has a vision of Rey and Finn, leading the new Jedi order, hand in hand. And Poe, the pilot. Always a step behind. Just a normal guy, with no Force to speak of.

He had thought they were a pair. A duo. But Poe is beginning to realize that’s just the world that lives in his head.

“Huh,” Poe says, eloquently summing up his feelings.

“Well?” Finn’s eyes are searching and frantic. He’s obviously been nervous about this - about telling Poe. Well, fuck him. Poe’s been nervous, too, and Finn’s trodden all over him like he’s a doormat.

“Well? It doesn’t change anything.”

“Doesn’t change anything??”

“Okay, so it changes a lot. That’s great. Great.” Poe gets up and begins pacing around the abandoned ship.

“Is it great, though?” He can hear Finn following him.

“I don’t know! _You’re_ the one who -”

“I’m not the one who chose it. Poe, I’m scared.” Finn’s voice breaks, and Poe’s heart wrenches. He turns around to see Finn, his head high, but his hands shaking. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not alone,” says Poe instantly, his heart swelling with the need to prove to Finn exactly how not alone he is. He puts his hands on Finn’s shoulders, but doesn’t go further. He doesn’t trust himself to.

“I will be, though,” Finn whispers. “I should be.”

“Why the fuck would you say that?” Poe demands, fingers fisting in Finn’s jacket. His jacket. It brings them closer together.

“Because no-one will be safe with me around. Not now. Not ever.”

“The Empire is gone,” Poe says, “And the First Order, and the Final Order.”

“It doesn’t matter. Force-sensitives are… we’re never safe.”

Poe thinks back to his pilot academy days. There was a kid there, not much younger than him. Bellamy. She was top of the class, could do things with the ships not even their teachers could manage, then she had disappeared in the middle of the night. There had been whispers about her abilities after that. Poe had never seen her again.

“No one’s ever really safe.” Poe can feel Finn’s breath, hot on his face. The space between their bodies feels tense, like a spring.

“Please don’t,” Finn whispers, and Poe takes his hands off him like he’s burning. “I can’t. Not now.”

With one last burning, pained look, Finn walks away, and Poe is left alone in the flaming wreckage of his mind.

# # #

Rose doesn’t know how to meditate, but if she did, she’d say this is the best place to do it. She’s sitting on the edge of the branch, legs swinging over the side, wind gently ruffling her hair, when she hears a _thud._

She looks over and sees Rey, lying unconscious on the branch.

“Shit,” she mutters, and pushes herself to her feet, walking as quickly as she dares along the branch. “Rey?”

There’s no response. Rey’s hand is alarmingly still, lying palm up, and it’s -

Sliding.

Rey is sliding _off the fucking branch._

Rose abandons caution and launches herself forwards, skidding along the smooth bark, and grabs onto Rey just as she begins to pick up speed. Then Rose can feel the weight of Rey’s body pulling her forwards, and she tries to stop, to dig in her heels, but the bark doesn’t provide enough friction.

Rose’s brain informs her, very helpfully, that they are both going to go over.

It’s a split-second decision, one that will either see her die a hero or live with terrible guilt. Rose lets go of Rey, grabbing onto a branch nearby to steady herself, barely stopping herself from going over. She can hardly bring herself to look over the edge, but she does.

She sees Rey.

Rey is _floating_.

Rey, still unconscious, is floating in the midst of some invisible force. She’s out of arm’s reach now, inching ever so slowly away from the tree, as if a steady current is pulling her. Rose swears and looks around for something to reach her with. There’s nothing. No loose branches, no tools. Nothing.

“Rey!” she calls out. Rey snuffles, her face twitching, and she begins to really fall. Rose’s heart falls with her, no no _no -_ but her descent stops after about twenty feet, and continues floating, way out of reach. Shit. Rose can’t risk disturbing her again.

The only hope is that there’s something to help her in the rest of this tree.

Rose runs for it, not letting herself think about the height she’ll fall if she fails, grasping onto the trunk, edging her way around. On the other side, there’s a whole network of branches like the one Rey just fell off, and, thankfully, signs of civilization. Small stools and tables are perched on some platforms, chests and tools on others. Rose sprints for the chests, panting, and swears when she finds they’re empty. There’s nothing for it but to keep going, to hope against hope she’ll find something.

She edges through a tiny space in between two huge branches, and blanches at the drop that meets her. She can’t go any further this way. It’s a dead end. The end of her hope, too.

Rose feels tears of frustration spring to her eyes. How did this go so badly wrong? She can still feel the effects of her hangover from the Resistance party. It’s a bitter reminder of success that has deserted them in just a day.

She feels her nose begin to drip and tips her head back automatically to stop it. That’s when she sees it. Her savior.

It’s not a huge ship, but it’s much bigger than an X-wing. It’s the same green as the leaves which surround it, which is maybe why she didn’t see it sooner. The ship looks to have crash-landed, or rather, crash-caught itself in the canopy.

Rose doesn’t waste any time and starts shimmying her way up the two thick branches, pushing herself up by holding her arms tense across the gap. Once she’s at the same level, she somehow manages to grapple her way onto a branch just a little thicker than her arm, swinging her way determinedly towards the ship. She doesn’t let herself look down, doesn’t let herself take any time to think, or else she knows she’ll never do it and Rey will fall to her death.

She does do it, though.

The hatch comes into view, and then it’s beneath Rose’s feet. She bites her lip and jumps, which was - in hindsight - a terrible idea, because now her mouth is bleeding. But she’s on the hatch. It opens easily, without a creak, and she lowers herself in. She doesn’t have eyes for anything in the hold except the pilot’s seat. She hops into it - another terrible idea. Her movement seems to have shifted the balance of the craft in the tree because it starts to groan and the floor vibrates beneath her feet with a horrible scraping sound.

“Oh fuck,” says Rose. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fu - uuuuuuuuck!”

She fumbles around the controls, looking frantically for a Big Red Button that might help her out, the ship lurching to the side, leaves trailing at the outside. Then she remembers about the gearstick, and her left hand flies to a, thankfully, familiar feeling. She pushes it forwards and something in the ship stirs. The engine!

The ship is still sliding, though, and bumping over something that Rose desperately hopes will catch it.

“Come oooon,” she groans. “Come on, come on, please, please.” She pushes the gearstick forwards more, pushes some more buttons at random, and the engine starts with a rough choking noise. She grabs the steering wheel, and pulls it out, _nose up_ _nose up_ _come on!_

The nose, blessedly, wonderfully, beautifully, points up.

Rose starts to cry with relief, her breath coming in sobs that match the timing of the engine revs as she steers the ship up, up, and out of the Wroshyr tree.

Rose navigates her way around the tree in the ship carefully. She can technically fly, but it’s been years, and she’s not familiar with this ship’s controls. The engine mostly behaves, but every now and then it gives a little sputter, making the ship jerk from side to side abruptly. _It’s fine. It’s fine._

Rey comes into view as a tiny speck at the top of the viewscreen. She’s still floating, thank the Force, but she’s started to spin, head over heels. It’s a little alarming, especially when Rose remembers the safety debriefings they had about space-spin and centrifugal force, bleeding toes and burst eye vessels. She pushes the throttle forwards, urging the ship forwards, aiming for the spot just beneath Rey.

She wonders what she’s going to do once she gets there, and dismisses it for a thought she can have once she gets there.

When she’s navigated the ship underneath Rey, she tries to have the thought, but her mind blanks. She’s stayed this calm for this long, but it’s starting to fray at the edges, and this is one last problem she doesn’t want to have to figure out. But she does have to. She does.

She takes a second to collect herself, breathing deep and slow, in through her mouth and out through her nose. Paige would tell her to calm down. She was always better at quick thinking than Rose. If she focuses properly she can almost hear her sister talking. _Calm down, and put the ship into hover, dumbass._

Hover.

_Hover._

She really is a dumbass. Rose smashes the hover button, and a cool female voice says _hover mode activated._ She dashes to the ladder and hauls herself up, flinging open the catch. Rey is floating just an inch or two above the ship (nice parking, Paige would tell her). Rose grabs her hand and pulls. As soon as their skin touches, Rey stops floating, and falls with a _thud_ onto the roof. Rose drags her through into the hold with a grunt of effort, and they fall to the floor as soon as Rey’s weight is inside.

Rose’s head aches from the impact and she can barely breathe beneath an unconscious Rey, but she’s never felt more relieved.

# # #

Rey doesn’t panic. She does not panic. Her breath is echoing in whatever space she’s in and it’s going a lot faster than usual, but she _absolutely is not -_

Okay, so she’s panicking. Don’t rub it in.

Take a breath. Another. Another. Slow it down. They’re not real breaths because it isn’t her body, she’s not in her _body -_

Slow it down. Take a nice, long, slow breath. Another. Good.

Take stock.

She’s not in a physical space, as such, because she’s not a physical being at the moment. That’s okay. It’s okay. She’s going to get back to physicality soon. Soon.

What about time? Is the space temporal? How much time is passing, wherever her body is? Is she dead yet?

Slow it down. Take a breath. Take stock.

She’s stuck at the bottom of whatever she fell down to get here. It’s a current of Force, and it’s streaming endlessly. She tries to reach out to it, to stop the flow, but it’s vast and heavy, and she’s barely a pebble in its way. She’s never going to get out. Never ever. Is she dead yet?

Stop it stop it _stop it stop it_

Slow it down. Slow. Down.

A pebble is still a rock is still a thing. She’s still here. Rey is still Rey, and Rey can do this.

She reaches out again, not trying to stop anything, just feeling. And her senses expand.

Rey is not a physical being at the moment. Rey’s size is indefinite. Her senses expand, and she expands, and she becomes bigger than the stream of Force. And then it’s inside her.

If Rey was a physical being, she might be sick with the feeling. It’s not familiar: she’s being turned inside out. She remembers what Rose said.

_Fate is stumbling blindly through the web of us._

The heat of the slightly-warmed speeder beneath her hands from that moment flashes through her. It tingles, and not in a pleasant way, but the way of recovering sensation after numbness. A few pricks. The sensation vanishes quickly.

Sensation.

That was a physical sensation, which means she can feel physical things which means she’s getting back to her body which means -

Rey starts to catalogue sensation. Not only to recall what it was, but how it felt. She thinks of sand in her boots on Jakku, and it makes her toes hurt. _Rey has toes._ She wrinkles her nose at the memory of the waterhole’s stench, the one she first saw Finn drinking out of. She has a _nose._ Her hands come alive with the feel of Luke’s saber, warm and solid in her grasp. Her legs remember the ache of endlessly running, her stomach the ache of too few portions in her early years. Her arms remember holding Ben in those last few moments they had, her lips, her face, they tingle and burn with the memory’s warmth.

Rey is alive with sensation, and just like that, she snaps back into place.

And she doesn’t panic.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! And thank you to Morrigan's Muse for beta'ing. Let me know if you enjoy with a kudos or comment 💖💖💖

Finn walks onto the landing deck of Chandrila alone. He finds his way to the Senate alone. He enters the meeting room on the highest floor, and takes his seat, alone. People begin to file in after him, but he barely registers they’re there. He sits at the table, and stares at his hands.

He can’t shake the look Poe gave him. Shock, mixed with horror. It was no less than Finn had expected. No less than he deserved. He thinks he’s starting to understand how Rey feels; why she’s always running off on her own. It’s all very well to dream of being able to use the Force, to be one of the Chosen Ones, but in reality, it’s a cage. A trap. One that Finn will never be able to get out of.

Because what can he do? What are his options here?

He could try to lie low, like most Force-sensitives do. He would never be able to have anything more than a normal life, never be able to stand out of a crowd, never really be able to trust the people around him. It might be too late to do that already, though, given that he’s sitting at a table with the future small council of the Republic.

If he can’t lie low, then what? If he is going to be watched, should he do something worth watching? Should he let the tug he feels deep within him guide his steps and take him to where he can feel his destiny waiting?

The truth is, Finn is terrified. Either he becomes a - a - a Force-wielder (he can’t quite bring himself to think the word _Jedi),_ or he abandons the Resistance, everyone he knows, and goes on the run. Either way, Poe will never look at him the same way again. No, scratch that. Either way, he _has_ to do it without Poe. It’s just too dangerous otherwise. He’s seen what happens to Je - Force-wielders who fall in love. Leia’s son killed Han. Leia’s mother died after giving birth. And Rey… well, she’s caught up in the Skywalker mess now too, on a wild goose chase for her other half.

No, romance doesn’t work well with the Force. It never has. And he’d be a fool to ignore it.

Finn’s heart aches. His hands clench around each other. He has to push back the tears, and try not to flinch when he feels rather than sees Poe walk in. Does he have to take over the room like that? The gentle swagger of his hips, the way he always scans any space he walks into, right to left and back again. On the other hand, it could just be that Finn notices him too much. Hell, Finn loves him too much.

He sneaks one glance at Poe across the table. Poe is looking at him, not even trying to hide the hurt on his face. Finn feels it like a blow to his chest and looks away quickly. If only Poe didn’t feel everything and anything with all the intensity of a star destroyer, maybe it’d be easier.

But he does. And so it won’t be.

The meeting starts, and Finn has to stop his train of thought. They have a galaxy to run, and it can’t afford these distractions.

# # #

“-ey? Rey? Can you hear me? Oh! Hi! Rey!”

Rey blinks open her eyes to see Rose hovering above her, looking anxious.

“Ungh,” she groans. Her body feels strangely mortal, after floating free in the Force. Her stomach is unsettled, so it does the only thing it can think of to do.

“Gon’ be sick,” she whispers, and Rose shoves a bucket at her just in time for Rey to be violently ill. Rose rubs her back soothingly, drawing warm gratitude and a feeling of general unworthiness from within Rey.

“There we are,” Rose murmurs, “Feel better?”

Rey holds her breath for a couple seconds, then nods tentatively. Her stomach seems to be happier without its contents, at least.

“Thanks,” she croaks.

Rose pats her shoulder, and says, “Let’s get back to base.”

Suddenly the ship starts making a dreadful wheezing sound. Rey cringes at the loud noise, her ears ringing, and she sees Rose stand up. It fades within a few moments, though, and Rey is just about to ask Rose what ship they’re on when a voice begins speaking, with no discernible source.

_Security alert. Hull breached. Prepare for termination._

“Wait, _what?”_ Rose yells. “You have got to be joking -”

_Ten._

“Motherfu -”

_Nine._

Rey gathers enough of her wits about her to stand. Not that it helps.

_Eight._

“What do we do? How do we stop it?” Rose is wringing her hands, pacing frantically about the hold.

_Seven._

“Can you fly with the Force?”

“What? No! That’s not how it -”

_Six._

“But you did it before! You were floating!” Rose begins to pat down the walls, which are smooth and bare.

_Five._

“And unconscious!” Rey goes to help her pat down the smooth, bare walls.

_Four._

“We don’t have time for this. Computer, abort -” Rey is cut off by the ship’s voice.

_Abort unsuccessful. Three._

“I’m sorry,” says Rose, putting her face in her hands. “I had one job, and I -”

_Two._

“- screwed it all up.” Her shoulders shake.

Rey steps forward and hugs Rose tight. If they’re going to die, at least they won’t be -

_One._

\- alone.

_Fault detected in termination equipment. Please report to your nearest Starship Center_ _for servicing. Fault detected in termination equipment. Please report to your nearest Starship Center for servicing. Fault detected in termination equipment. Please report to your nearest Starship Center for -_

“Fuck,” says Rose, and sinks to the floor. “One more near death experience, and I swear I’ll die.”

Rey pats her on the head. “You get used to it.”

# # #

Finn is new to being a Resistance general, and as such, new to politics. He very quickly discovers that he hates it.

He can’t believe how long it takes to reach an agreement on the smallest things. They’re all on the same side, for the Force’s sake, and they all believe in the same cause. But it seems where they were once united by a common goal, now they are divided without a clear enemy to fight. Anything that can be argued about is argued about, whether it be spelling (does the Small Council really need to be capitalized? Apparently so), the type of paper they ought to use (Wroshyr-paper is still being unsustainably farmed), or whether the standard height of chairs in the meeting room is discriminatory. The shorter races wholeheartedly agree that it is, and stools have to be found.

It’s a performance that Finn doesn’t feel comfortable observing, let alone taking part in. He senses Poe feeling the same without so much as looking his direction, his frustration surging with each extra discussion that trails away from the main one. And - huh. Since he began noticing it, some of this Force stuff has become a lot more obvious. He wonders if Rey is able to read moods like that. He wonders if he’ll ever get the chance to ask her.

There’s always something more, always another Very Important Jedi Mission to go on for her. Finn has never been drawn into the Force like that, and he doesn’t know whether to be thankful for it or resentful that his own connection isn’t stronger. Probably the former, because it seems that once it starts, it doesn’t stop until the Jedi in question either dies, or breaks their connection with the Force.

What if that happens to Rey?

Finn feels like he has too much responsibility already. To the Resistance, and now to all the other Force-sensitives like him, and, always, to -

“And what about Stormtroopers?” Jannah says sharply. Finn jolts himself out of his train of thought. “There are thousands of us who were enslaved from birth, thousands of children in the middle of their training now. We need a plan.”

The other council members shuffle and fidget, but remain silent. Jannah’s face falls.

“Can we try to return the kids to their parents?” Poe suggests into the silence.

Finn shrugs. “It’s not that easy. Most of us are taken so early we don’t even know what system we’re from.”

“Shit,” Poe mutters. “Well, they’re kids. They need a home. We can try to - to make a list of them all, and advertise it around the galaxy. But otherwise...”

“We have to rehome them,” says Jannah.

“I agree.” Finn nods at her. “What if there’s not enough families willing to take them in, though?” The thought of it hurts. Who wouldn’t want to help them, vulnerable and in need as they are? Finn is still that child somewhere deep down.

Klaud chuckles. “Of course there won’t be enough families. They’re stormtroopers. This whole conversation is a waste of time.”

“Well, why don’t you come up with an idea, then?” Poe says, bristling. Finn feels his anger, white-hot, barely concealed.

“They’re not _our_ problem. We shouldn’t have to -”

“They are our problem,” Poe interrupts. “Who disagrees with that?” He glares around the table. No one raises a hand. “Good.”

“We’ll start our own program. Not for training, but for living.” Finn tries not to let his voice shake. What would he have done, ten years ago, for a chance like that?

“An orphanage,” Jannah says, and smiles at him. “A new start.”

“How much will it cost, then?” Klaud asks.

“It will cost as much as it costs,” says Jannah firmly, “For these children to have a chance at a happy life.”

“That’s what we’ve been fighting for,” Poe agrees.

“That’s exactly what the stormtroopers were fighting against,” Klaud mutters, and Finn gets a sudden glimpse of Poe punching him square on the nose. He startles, head whipping to face Poe, whose hands are clenched tight into fists.

“Which is why we won. So we can help them.” Jannah says it in a conclusive way, clearly inviting no more discussion. “That’s settled. Let’s move on.”

# # #

When Ben next wakes up, his brain seems to be done with suppressing its feelings, because Rey is the only thing he can think about. In the half-awake state before consciousness, he remembers her looking through the eyes of his dæmon, Asa. He remembers feeling the bond pulse, stronger, closer. The emptiness now is palpable. He misses Rey so much.

He wakes properly, and the feeling doesn’t fade. He needs to get back to her. He needs to tell her everything. He wants to see her forgive him, wants to look into her eyes and find them clear of doubt.

That’s probably asking too much of her, though. Too much of anyone. Ben knows he is not forgivable. He has killed thousands of people. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Millions? They destroyed so many planets. No way to know how many people were on them. It could be billions. No, Ben is utterly unforgivable in his current state. He may have turned, but he’s not a good person.

His stomach rumbles, and he tries to remember the last time he ate. He’s not a good person, but he is a hungry person. He hops out of the stretcher, pleasantly surprised at how little his ribs hurt with the motion, and Asa winds herself around his legs.

“I think Maja is outside,” she says. “You should eat.”

“Yeah,” he grunts, and stumbles out the door. He didn’t get a proper look at the surroundings when he was brought in before, but now he does, he’s reminded vividly of Starkiller Base. Tall pines encroach on every clearing, their dark green leaves rustling menacingly in the breeze. They’re powdered with snow, though, as is the ground, and the little stone huts scattered up the dirt road.

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” Maja says, and Ben startles, looking over at where her voice came from. She’s knelt in the space before her hut, holding a trowel and pick, and looks to be digging a hole in the frozen mud.

“Oh, um. Hi.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes,” says Ben. “But I don’t want to trouble -”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Maja, her woodpigeon dæmon clicking his beak. “We’re healing you, and part of healing is eating, isn’t it?”

Ben doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels too big and clumsy for this place, as though if he so much as turns around he might accidentally hurt someone. He doesn’t know how plentiful food is, and he hasn’t done anything to earn his keep.

Maja sighs, pushes herself up, and grabs his arm with her cold and dirty hand. She marches him back into the hut, sits him down at the table, and thumps two slices of buttered bread in from of him.

“Stop thinking about it and eat. You’ll feel better.”

Ben doesn’t want to argue with that tone, and so he eats. He does start to feel better, a little more energy flowing through his veins now. The bread is thick and hearty, laced with all sorts of seeds. As he finishes his second slice, a mug of something steaming and brown is pushed into view.

“Chocolatl,” says Maja.

“I’m sorry?”

“Chocolatl. Don’t they have that in your world?”

“Er,” says Ben, racking his brains. “I don’t think so?”

“God, I couldn’t live without it. Go on, then. Try some.”

Ben lifts the mug to his mouth and takes a tentative sip. It’s warm and sweet, velvety and rich. It’s possibly the best thing he’s ever tasted. And something clicks into place.

 _“Oh._ It’s chocolate.”

“Choco-late?”

Ben remembers Han bringing him a whole block of chocolate when he was seven. He’d eaten the whole thing in one night, and as a result, neither he nor his parents slept a wink.

“Yes. Chocolate.”

“Pffft,” Maja waves her hands in a dismissive motion. _“Chocolate.”_

Chocolate or chocolatl, Ben drinks it as quickly as the heat allows him, and perhaps a little quicker. His tongue is scalded. Well, he was never good at impulse control.

“Good. Now, come with me. Quinlan wants to see you.”

Ben chokes on the last of the chocolate. It sours in his mouth as he remembers their last meeting, the nausea of having his mind probed.

“Come on,” says Maja, not unkindly. Ben gets up from the table, reluctantly, and puts his hand on Asa’s head to calm her. Her ears are flat, and her fur slightly bushed up. She settles a little at his touch, though, and they follow Maja out of the hut.

# # #

Quinlan’s hut looks just as modest as everyone else’s. Maja leaves him at the door after giving him an encouraging smile. Ben takes a deep breath, puts up his mental defences with a thought, and enters.

The Queen is sitting in a large wooden chair, her head hunched over an old book. She doesn’t look up when he closes the door behind him, only raises a hand to wave him forwards. He sits on the little stool on the other side of her desk, and waits.

After two minutes, he clears his throat.

“Yes, hello,” she says, looking up from her dusty tome.

“Um,” says Ben. He had been hoping she might take the initiative in this conversation. “You wanted to see me?”

“Quite. You have a very interesting past.”

Ben wouldn’t call his past interesting so much as a raging burning mess.

“Do I?”

“I wanted to talk about the dark side.” Quinlan clasps her hands in front of her, resting on the book. “What is it?”

Ben doesn’t want to answer that. He doesn’t want to talk about any of this. But this woman gave him shelter, had him healed and fed.

“It’s one side of the Force. We call it dark because it’s a different type of power than, well, the light. It requires a much more intense emotional connection. Rage or hate is the easiest way to access it, and why it’s considered to be evil.”

“But could you also access it with love, or joy?”

“I... I don’t know. Technically, maybe. But there’s not a lot of that in my world, and I don’t know anyone who’s tried.”

Quinlan sniffs. “In your memories, you sensed a pull to the dark side. What was that?”

“It’s something most Force-sensitives experience. It can become a bit like an addiction, once you give in. It becomes harder and harder to resist.”

“Hmmm. Interesting.” Quinlan blinks at him, and silence engulfs the room for a beat before she goes on. “Now, you’ve probably heard Lilibet going on about this prophecy.”

Ben nods. He’s not sure why a prophecy from their world would have anything to do with him, though.

“Would you like to read it?” she asks. “It might be enlightening for you.”

He nods again, and she pushes the book towards him. He turns it around and leans over it to read.

_Two will come, though they be as one,_

_One chooses life, and one must die,_

_The survivor will see how Light falls, when ‘tis done,_

_And will restore the worlds to order._

Ben stares at the last word, panic rising in his chest.

“What do you think?” Quinlan asked, tapping her fingers on the wooden desk. “Sound like you?”

_Restore the worlds to order order order ORDER ORDER_

“How did you get this?” Ben asks, his voice rough. He stands up from his chair, hands shaking.

“We can read the patterns in Dust,” says Quinlan. “It requires a special instrument. It’s reliable. That’s all you need to know. Now tell me, do you know what this means?”

“I - I -” Ben can’t talk properly, his mouth opening and closing as his heart hammers away in his chest. He closes his eyes as a memory forces its way into his head.

_Order,_ says the voice, _is essential. The galaxy is full of chaos, and it is our place to iron it all out._

Ben thinks that might be dumb, because you need chaos to fight chaos.

_That may be so, but the ends will justify the means. We will have order. We must have order._

“But what if people break the law anyway?”

_Then they are a threat to that order. What do we do with threats?_

“We eliminate them.”

_Good._

Quinlan is frowning up at him. “Why are you so worried?”

Ben can’t tell her. If he tells her, she’ll know that it’s him who is going to destroy the world – _worlds –_ and she’ll kill him on the spot. Then he feels a nudge at his hand, and looks down to see Asa’s wide yellow eyes looking up at him.

“I don’t think it means what you think it means,” she says.

“How can it not?”

“It says _the survivor will see how Light falls._ How can the light side be the one to start a new order?”

Ben thinks about it. It does mention light, which is strange. The First and Final Orders had nothing to do with light, and everything to do with the dark side. Could it be a misleading word choice?

Whatever it is, he can feel a ball of anxiety churning in his stomach, but he sits down and forces himself to breathe.

“What did you think it means?” Quinlan asks.

“The - the - the regimes that I worked under, while I used the dark side. They used that word. _Order.”_

“But they’re gone now?”

“Well, yes, but -”

“You’re worried you’re going to start another one.”

Ben tenses his muscles to run, getting ready for her to pull out a saber or whatever they use here and strike him down. But she stays perfectly still and calm, her bird dæmon preening his feathers on the table.

“Yes,” he admits.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in such fear of yourself.”

She’s hit the nail precisely on the head, and Ben hates it. He hates being known, being vulnerable like this. He can feel heat pushing its way into his cheeks, a misdirected and familiar anger building up inside him.

“What does _two will come as one_ mean?” he asks, rereading the prophecy. “And then... _One must die.”_

_A dyad in the Force. A power unseen for generations..._

_One must die._

Shit.

Quinlan is watching his face closely, and doesn’t bother answering him. “I think you know already.”

Ben bites his lip, and pushes his hand into Asa’s soft fur for comfort. He’d always thought he’d die young, but it’s not pleasant to have it confirmed in a ‘reliable’ prophecy. It confirms what Asa said, though - order can’t be referring to any kind of Final Final Order. It’s comforting to know that Rey will live on and fulfill her destiny in the light.

Even without him.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s a calm and peaceful night on Canto Bight. The Fathiers have had a rare day off, and the faint sound of contented munching can be heard from their stables. Duck sweeps hay back under the doors from where they’ve kicked it out, and looks up at the stars above.

He knows it’s the sea making the rushing sound, but he likes to imagine the stars are calling to him with it.

Duck often comes out here. Even when there’s no sweeping to do. It’s calm and quiet and there isn’t anyone else up at this time.

“Duck?”

Well, sometimes there’s Kyra.

“Hi,” he says with little enthusiasm. “Why’re you up?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” She sounds defensive, and he suddenly realizes she came from the wrong direction, not from their sleeping quarters.

“Where were you?”

“None of your business,” Kyra snaps. She turns away, as if to move away, and he rushes forwards to grab her arm.

“Tell me!”

But his older sister never gets the chance to reply, because as soon as the words leave Duck’s mouth, a hand clasps around his arm and he’s yanked off his feet. He goes to scream but gets a faceful of damp cloth, and the last thing his brain registers before unconsciousness is the slight hint of sweetness in the smell...

Cold concrete against his cheek.

Bright white light that his eyelids can’t block against.

The sound of someone crying. It’s Kyra.

But the faint twinge of panic the sound sets off in Duck isn’t nearly enough to pierce the suffocating blanket his mind is wrapped in. It dims him to everything except his aching fatigue. It’s not a choice to give in, not a choice when his head droops into sleep again.

Bright white light again.

His cheek is on something softer, but scratchy. It makes a rasping noise against his ear.

No Kyra.

This time the panic jolts him to alertness and he opens his eyes even as the light stings them. He’s lying on his side, and flashing in front of him is white brick after white brick. His senses helpfully inform him that he is on a moving thing, which makes his stomach flip.

“Ungh,” he manages.

“Shhh,” says someone who is definitely not Kyra. “Hush now.”

Duck has had a lifetime of obeying orders. He’s good at obeying orders. So he does.

The owner of the voice is a plump middle-aged woman, wearing a long white robe without any wrinkles. Her hair is covered by a strange hat that Duck doesn’t know how to identify. She gives Duck orders, and he follows them. He gets off the stretcher. He strips. He bathes. He lets her cut his hair short and close to his head. He dries off. He puts on the new clothes she gives him (a pale green jumpsuit that turns out to be surprisingly warm). He stands still while she takes photos, and weighs him, and measures his height. And he does his best not to react to the tiny animal in the room with them.

She’s not really an animal, though. Duck can tell. She’s a part of him somehow, a person with her own head that looks like an animal that can also, apparently, change forms at will. She switches from porg to dove to cat. Duck thinks she’s the coolest thing he’s ever seen.

“That’s your _dæmon_ ,” says the woman, spitting the word like it’s something dirty and shameful. “Don’t pay too much attention. She’s only showing off.”

Duck tries not to look at her, but it’s difficult when she scampers up on his shoulder in the form of a white mouse and tucks herself into his collar. He can feel the love emanating from her tiny body. The woman doesn’t seem to notice, though, and finishes filling out his paperwork with a flourish.

“You’re recorded. Go on through to the next room, now. To the doctor’s office.”

“Haven’t got any money to pay for a doctor, miss,” Duck says respectfully.

She looks up at him. “It’s free. Go on.”

Duck hasn’t ever heard of a free doctor. He hopes it’s not one of those scams Kyra always warns him about, but really, what choice does he have? He walks down the hallway and stops in front of a big white door that says _Doctor_ on it. He takes a deep breath, and pushes it open.

A man with grey scruff on his chin and a pristine white lab coat sits at a large and magnificent wooden desk. Duck is sitting on the stool opposite him. His feet don’t quite touch the ground. The man is reading from a very fancy clipboard, one that has a little slot at the side to put a pen in. He frowns, stroking his chin, puts down the clipboard and takes his glasses off. He leans forward across the table, steeples his hands, and looks at Duck.

“Er,” mumbles Duck, “I think there’s been a mistake, sir.”

“A mistake?” The man’s voice is soft and lilting.

“Yeah, see, I’m not anyone important or nothing, sir. You don’t want me. Sir.”

The man chuckles, glancing down at his notes. “There’s been no mistake. Now, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and it’s very important that you answer truthfully. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Name?”

“Duck.”

“Surname?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Age?”

“’Bout ten. Not sure exactly, sir, sorry, sir.”

“Hometown?”

“Canto Bight.”

“Don’t be silly, please. What’s the town’s name?”

“Canto Bight, sir, you can look it up if you like.”

The man purses his lips, and writes it down, shaping the words in his mouth as he does. “If you say so. Now, that girl you came in with. Is she your sister?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what’s her name?”

Duck shifts in his seat, not looking into the man’s eyes. “Pardon, sir, but couldn’t you ask her?”

The man makes an odd noise, and when Duck looks back at him, he can tell he’s sucking his teeth. He wonders if the man knows he makes a noise when he does it. Would it be polite to tell him?

“I’d just like to double-check the facts,” the man says, a wide smile spreading across his face. “It’s important that we get this right.”

“Will I be in trouble with Kyra if I tell you, sir?” Duck claps his hands over his mouth as soon as he says it. The man chuckles again.

“No, no, of course not. Kyra won’t mind. How old is she, roughly?”

“I think... thirteen. She’d know better than me, sir.”

“Quite. Lovely. Thank you for being truthful, Duck. You’ll find that honesty is well-rewarded here. I’m going to ask you some more questions, and these ones could be a bit more difficult, so take your time, alright?”

“Yes, sir.”

The man looks down at the papers in front of him again, his eyes scanning from left to right several times. “Have you ever made anything happen that you couldn’t explain?”

A faint twinge of interest surfaces at the back of Duck’s mind, but he ignores it, because the question can’t possibly mean anything about that. He’s never told anyone about _that._

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Some people are gifted with special powers, and they can make things happen with their mind. Do you think you could be one of those people?”

“No, sir,” Duck answers confidently.

“And why is that?”

“I’m not special, sir.”

The man chuckles. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Think very carefully. Your powers might appear like a... a kind of invisible force.”

Duck jolts upright. How can he - how can a stranger - did Duck give it away somehow?

“It’s alright,” the man says, raising his hands in the air. “It’s perfectly alright. It’s a wonderful thing, to have a gift like that.”

“But I’m not supposed to,” Duck says, biting his lip.

“You leave that down to me. I think you’re supposed to, and I make the rules around here. Sound good?”

Duck’s not sure if it does, really, but there doesn’t seem to be any other option than to say, “Yes.”

“Excellent. You’re going to be staying here for a little while, on a special training camp. We’re going to teach you how to use your powers properly. Isn’t that going to be fun?”

“What about Kyra?” Duck wishes he hadn’t let himself be separated from her.

“Ah, yes, well, powers tend to run in the family, so she’ll be staying here too.”

Duck breathes a sigh of relief.

“And,” the man continues, “If you do very well, you might get to go on a special mission where you can use your powers in the real world. Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

“Er,” says Duck, who is still shaking from the shock of his secret powers being talked about so openly and not like they’re wrong at all, “Sure.”

“Lovely. Go with Sister Yiyi now, please, and she’ll get you all set up and ready. Dinner is at six. Don’t be late.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?”

“What do I have to do to earn dinner?”

The man frowns. “We’ll simply give it to you. While you’re with us, you’ll be very well looked after, I assure you.”

Duck doesn’t quite know how to process that. It’s too many shocks, too close together. He nods, entirely confused, and follows Sister Yiyi in her pressed white uniform out of the office.

The nurse takes Duck to dinner after he sees the doctor. They’re a little early, so he waits by himself at the steel-top tables, looking nervously at all the seats. Are there really this many children here? Are they all... gifted like him? Something rustles against his neck and interrupts his train of though. It’s his dæmon. He holds out his hands, and she runs down to them, turning back into her porg form.

“Hello,” says Duck. “What’s your name?”

She blinks up at him with wide eyes and shivering feathers. “I don’t have one.”

“Do you want one?”

“Eventually.”

He smiles at her. “Let’s think of one together. Eventually.”

“I’d like that,” she says, hopping onto his shoulder. They survey the room together, and both jump when the door opens.

A hum of chatter spills precedes the children that enter the room. They’re of all different ages and different looks, the one thing binding them together their short hair and green jumpsuits. A taller, hunched figure at the back sticks out to Duck, and his heart leaps when she turns her face towards him.

“Kyra!” he yells, and races towards her.

“Duck?!”

She sweeps him off his feet as he catapults into her. He’s never been so glad to be hugged by his older sister.

“They wouldn’t tell me where you were,” she pants, setting him down. “Thank the Force you’re alright.”

“I’m sorry, they asked me questions about you and I didn’t want to get into trouble so I told them -”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” She strokes his hair in a comforting motion that he remembers their mother doing long ago. “We’re okay.”

“Duck! Kyra!” Nurse Yiyi is standing over them, her eyebrows raised. “Get in the dinner line, or you’ll go hungry.”

They’re quick to obey. Dæmons might not be a universal concept, but hunger definitely is.

# # #

_Greetings, humans._ The computer voice speaks again. Now she isn’t panicking, Rey has time to notice that the voice is crisp, clear, and female. _I have been waiting for you._

“Oh, you have?” Rose asks, glaring daggers around the cabin. “Is that why you almost killed us?”

_I am unable to override certain protocols. I apologize for this shortcoming._

“A shortcoming?!”

_Yes. A shortcoming is defined as a fault or a failure to meet a certain standard, typically -_

“I know what a shortcoming is,” Rose says, over-enunciating each syllable. Rey makes the wise decision to stay out of her way for the time being.

_Good. You are intelligent. I have been waiting for someone intelligent._

Rose’s forehead creases. “You’ve been waiting for us?”

_For someone like you, to take me out of that tree. I have been there for forty-three years. My name is Artemis. What’s yours?_

“Rey,” says Rey automatically, holding up her hands when Rose glares daggers at her.

“Why did you do that?” she hisses at Rey. “We can’t trust this - this - _Artemis.”_

_Greetings, Rey and other unnamed human. You are wise to be wary of strangers, but keep in mind that I could kill you at any time by simply dropping out of the sky._

“You’d have to kill yourself first,” says Rose.

_I can’t be killed. I am not alive. I am stored in blastproof black boxes underneath the engine of the ship._

A muscle twitches in Rose’s jaw. “Rose. I’m Rose.”

_Greetings, Rose. Thank you for rescuing me._

Rose opens her mouth and closes it again. “No problem. Um.”

_What can I do for you in return?_

“Take us to back to the top of the Wroshyr,” Rey says quickly. “I think I know how to use it now.”

“Use it for what?” Rose asks.

“To travel to another world.”

# # #

“Hey, are you sure this is a good idea?” Rose is sitting in the copilot seat, watching Rey steer the ship expertly to the top of the Wroshyr. “I mean, how do you know it’ll work?”

“No one ever knows if anything will work. We just have to hope for the best.” Rey’s face is set, her jaw jutting out in determination.

_What a stupid sentiment,_ says Artemis. Rose ignores her.

“But the war’s over. We don’t have to rush.”

Rey lands the ship smoothly and effortlessly. Rose is sure the admiration is clear on her face, but she doesn’t look away when Rey turns to her.

“The war is over, but a Jedi’s path is never over. I’m... I’m like a leaf on the stream of creation. The Force will take me where I need to go. And I feel it pulling me now.” By the end of her monologue, Rey isn’t looking at Rose anymore. She’s gazing out the window, the dark green Wroshyr leaves reflected in her eyes.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being a leaf?” Rose asks before she can help herself.

Rey snorts. “Wouldn’t you?”

_I’ve been pretending to be a leaf for 43 years. I think I’ve gotten quite good at it._

Rose doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get Rey. How can she be so self-aware, and still want to do all the things the Force tells her? How can she talk to Rose as an equal, and still believe that she has a destiny above and beyond anyone else’s?

“Hey, can you help me with this?” Rey yells, banging her fist on the ship door. “It’s stuck.”

Rose rushes over and inspects the hinges. They’re not too rusty, for 43 years of disuse, but with a little oil they’ll open much easier. She finds a can tucked into the pocket on the back of Rey’s seat, and applies it generously to the hinges.

_Mmmmmm,_ groans Artemis.

“Can you not be so fucking weird about this?” Rose mutters.

_Oooh, that’s the - sorry - spot. It’s just been so long since anyone -_

“So that’s a no.”

The doors open easily after that, Artemis still making weird staticky sighs that Rose is never going to be able to unhear, and then they’re walking right onto the top of the Wroshyr. The trunk must have snapped at some point, or been cut off, because the top of the tree is a perfectly flat, smooth surface, except for a hollow in the middle about three meters across.

“Sooooo,” Rose draws out, looking around, “What are you gonna do, again?”

Then she sees Rey marching towards the hollow.

“Wait! Rey!” Rose runs to catch up with her, and stands by her side as she stares into the hollow. It’s not just a hollow - it’s a hole, and it appears to go all the way down the tree.

“This is it,” Rey murmurs.

Rose holds an arm in front of her to stop her from doing anything crazy like _jumping_ down that death trap, because she gets the horrible feeling that’s exactly what Rey intends to do.

“Slow down,” she says. “If the Force told you to kill yourself, would you?”

“It’s the center of the Force pull.” Rey is leaning towards the hole, putting pressure on Rose’s arm. “This is the right place. This is how I find Ben.”

Rose grits her teeth, and pushes her hand into her pocket. She finds a suitable object - a broken wrench - and throws it into the hole. She and Rey wait silently for the noise to come. They wait and wait and wait.

After thirty seconds, it’s clear they’re not going to be able to hear it.

“No,” Rose says, pushing Rey back. “No way are you going down there.”

“I have to.” Rey doesn’t struggle, but puts a hand on her arm and looks at her with those intense blue-grey eyes. “And you have to let me. Rose, this is what we were meant to find. I know it like I know myself.”

Rose’s stomach twists in the conflict. She knows, deep down, that Rey cannot and will not be stopped. If she has to, she’ll get past Rose. But she likes Rey. She considers her a friend, and Rose doesn’t just let her friends jump down eternally deep holes.

“I won’t let you,” Rose says, putting her hands on her hips and trying to look as intimidating as possible.

“Don’t do this.” Rey doesn’t look frightened, only exasperated.

“I have to.”

What Rey doesn’t know is that Rose has taken wing chun lessons her entire life, and doesn’t intend to let some half-trained Jedi get the better of her. When Rey runs at her, Rose steps neatly to the side, and uses her arms to flip Rey flat onto her back.

“Oof,” Rey groans pathetically.

“Sorry. But you’re not going to leave just like that.” Rey takes Rose’s offered hand, and Rose pulls her to her feet again. “It would be a shitty thing for a friend to do.”

Rey looks at the hole in the center of the tree with a poorly disguised longing. “Okay.”

“I know you think that you have to do all the mysterious crap the Force wants you to, but you’re allowed to not be so dumb about it.”

“I’m not dumb!” Rey exclaims, looking cross. “The Force -”

“You were just about to jump down a hole in a tree! You have no way of knowing if you would die or not!”

Rey has the grace to look abashed. “You... could be right.”

“And what about BB-8? And Chewie? What could I possibly tell them?”

“I don’t know.” Rey looks down, shaking her head.

“No, you didn’t think about that, did you? Fucking hell. You know, Poe told me what you were like, but I didn’t know the half of it.” Rose has a faint idea that she might regret what she’s saying later on, but she’s _pissed._ “Do you care about _anyone_ besides yourself?”

Rey sniffs once, twice, and then bursts into tears.

“Oh, shit,” says Rose, and moves towards her, an arm stretched out tentatively.

Rey sits down on the gnarled bark, curls her knees up, and buries her face in her hands. Rose sits down beside her.

“I’m sorry.” Guilt pulls low in Rose’s gut. “Rey?”

“You’re right,” Rey moans. Rose puts her arm around Rey, who immediately leans on her. “I’m a terrible friend.”

“You’re not.” Rose rubs her back. “You’re really not.”

“But I leave everyone behiiiind.” Rey scrubs at her face. “Poe is right. Do you know, on every single planet we traveled to in the last few days, I got distracted? Well. Not distracted. I felt the Force call me, and I followed it. Away from Finn and Poe and BB-8 and Chewie. Oh, Force, I thought I killed Chewie, and...” Rey cries harder.

“You didn’t. Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay, it’s the Force that’s dumb.” That earns Rose a watery laugh.

“I just... I thought if I stuck with what the Force told me to do, everything would be better. But it wasn’t. It was just chaos and fire and death and, well, you get the idea.”

“If the Force knew what to do, why would the galaxy be like this?”

“I don’t know,” Rey sniffs. “Maybe it’s us that keep on screwing up.”

Rose grins, and leans her cheek into Rey’s hair. “Well, sure, there’s a bit of that. But think about it. What’s the most important thing to you? In your life?”

“Family,” says Rey without missing a beat.

Fuck, that’s depressing. Rose takes that thought, puts it into a tiny box, and files it away to feel sad about later.

“Right. Not the Force. It’s the people we love that make us who we are, not some dumb-ass mystical web of fate.”

Rey takes a deep breath, and pushes herself to sit up properly.

“Rose Tico, I think you might be one of the wisest people I have ever met.”

Rose snorts, and punches her on the arm. “Sure.”

“Seriously.”

Rey smiles at her, and Rose feels like she’s been punched in the stomach with happiness.

“Let’s get back to the others, then,” says Rose.

Rey nods, and they walk away from the hole in the tree without a backwards glance.

# # #

Rey can hear Chewie yowling even over Artemis’ engines as they touch down at the imperial ruins. Her heart breaks to think of how she nearly hurt him, again, without even stopping to think about it. It’s not Ben’s fault, it’s not, it’s just that the Force seems to treat them like... really strong magnets. And they’ll tear through anything in their way.

It frightens Rey a bit to think like that, but she’s used to being scared of herself. What’s one more reason?

_“BeeEEEeeeEEE!”_ BB-8 squeaks when the hatch opens.

“We’re fine, BB, don’t worry.” Rey kneels to inspect his antenna. “I’m sorry for leaving you for so long.”

_“Whoop-de-whoop! Trrrrrill!”_

“Yes, that was us. The speeder was just something we found lying around.”

Chewie yowls again, and Rey looks up at him. He has his great paws set on his hips, and he’s looking at her like he _knows_ she should feel guilty.

“We had it under control,” she reassures him. “Well. Rose had it under control.”

Rose grins at her.

_“Beep-boop?”_

“We’re going to stay here for a bit, if that’s alright. I want to study the Wroshyr tree more carefully before I try to get through the portal.”

Chewie and BB voice their approval in a cacophony of beeps and roars.

“Great. Oh, and this is Artemis.”

“OI! ARTIE!” Rose hollers up the ramp. Rey bites down on her amusement at the indignant huff of steam Artemis releases.

_“I understand longer names may be hard for humans to process given your limited memory space, but my name is Artemis. Ar-te-mis. What is it?”_

“Are you staying with us?”

_“I believe so,”_ she replies coolly. _“The time for me to leave has not yet come.”_

“... Ooo-kay,” says Rose. “C’mon, let’s get our stuff from the Falcon.”

By the end of the week, Rey has had about ten Rose-induced epiphanies about life, the Force, and her destiny. Namely, that it doesn’t matter what the stars tell her do as long as her life is exactly the fucking way she wants it to be.

Oh, and she’s also picked up a lot of language. Rose swears more than Han did, which is really saying something. There’s a lot to swear about on Kashyyyk, though, whether it’s mud that Rey thinks will never be entirely gone from in between her toes, or the creepy flowers that Chewie tells her off for punching. He says they’re _endangered._ Rey personally wouldn’t mind if _Saava_ went extinct, not with the way they lock around her ankles when she’s not paying attention.

But apart from the flora and fauna, Rey is more relaxed than she’s been in a long time. She’s not sure if peace will ever feel entirely normal, if she’ll ever stop being disquieted by every loud noise that she can’t identify. For now, it’s entirely lovely to spend her days climbing around a giant tree with her friends.

# # #

It’s been a long night, which is to say it’s been exactly like every other night since... Poe can’t remember when. Time passes differently in council meetings. It feels like years since they won, since he kissed Finn, since Rey left, since everything went upside down. But it must have only been a week or two.

Poe stumbles into his quarters, rubbing his eyes and trying to stay awake long enough to find his way into bed. The guest rooms on Chandrila are nice, but he wishes they wouldn’t make the sheets so tight, so that he basically has to prise his way into them. He misses his bunk on the Falcon. He misses hearing Finn toss and turn in the bunk above him. It was a comforting reminder that he wasn’t alone.

Now, once he’s managed to slide his legs in between the sheets, he looks around the little room. There’s a plant on the table, but that’s it for other lifeforms. Poe thinks of late nights drinking wine with Leia, of all the stories she would tell him about the people she’d met across the galaxy. Poe thinks of late nights with BB-8, when they were on the run with that damned map. The little droid had the worst joke collection in the history of anything, ever. Poe thinks of late nights with Finn, persuading him to watch holodramas, both of them ending up with popcorn in their hair when Finn inevitably got bored.

Poe’s legs are trapped and his room is empty. This isn’t what they won the war for.

So he bolts out of bed, grabs his keycard, and heads for Finn’s quarters.

Finn squints at Poe as if he’s very far away, or behind a dense blanket of fog. Poe can see him make a valiant effort to keep his eyes fully open.

“Come in,” he grunts, and Poe does. Finn’s quarters are identical to his. Black and grey, smooth and shiny, with a small leafy houseplant on the bedside stand. Finn’s put his nightlight on the table, too, a soft blue thing he never sleeps without. “What’s up?”

“I... I didn’t want to be alone.” Poe, as usual, finds himself utterly incapable of lying to Finn. “I missed you.”

“Oh,” says Finn, and then, “Ohhhh,” as he yawns widely behind his hand. “Sorry.”

“S’okay.” Poe has to fight off his automatic mirrored yawn. “S’late.”

“I missed you too,” Finn says, sitting down on his bed. “Glad you came.”

“You are?” Poe sits down on the bed, closer to Finn than necessary.

“Mm-hm.” Finn lets himself fall backwards onto the bed, legs hanging off the side. “Stay with me.”

“Stay?”

“Yeah. You’re... nice and warm. For sleeping with.”

Poe snorts, but thinks better of making an innuendo. He doesn’t want to break whatever thin ice they might have formed here. He lies down next to Finn. It’s not comfortable, but when he looks over, he sees what he wants to see every night of his life.

Finn’s eyes are closed, his mouth hanging open, and his breaths are starting to come steady. His face is shining with blue from his nightlight. Poe’s heart cracks at how beautiful he is.

When Finn begins to snore in earnest, Poe gets up, pulls his legs onto the bed, shifts him into what he hopes is a comfortable position. He looks down at Finn, and his stomach twists in indecision. Will Finn be angry, if he stays? Will it be weird in the morning? If Poe goes, will he even make it back to his room before collapsing in exhaustion?

It’s the fatigue that makes the decision for him in the end. He awkwardly clambers over Finn to the other side of the tiny bed and flops himself down. Finn snuffles and rolls towards him, burying his face in Poe’s shoulder, his arm flopping over Poe’s waist. Poe screws up his face, mouths _what the fuck do I do_ to no-one in particular, and promptly falls asleep in the midst of his peril.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for following along and being so patient <3 I don't have any plans to continue writing this story, so I thought I'd just upload what I have written already. Stay safe my lovelies <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will update every Saturday, about 10pm UTC.


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